Beyond Earth, the spiritual successor to Alpha Centarui... not really.

[Sid]

Kudos to the OP; well-reasoned argument, like so many others that followed.

I spent NZ$116 on the game and have not got my money's worth--having only played 56 hours so far. A few of those hours have been exciting, but most have been annoying: if Susan Faceache quotes Adam Smith again, I'll send a group of mind worms over to her cities! (With SMAC/X, I felt that I was learning a bit of science and philosophy every time I played).

However, I never resent the money I spend with Firaxis because they always come good in the end. If they get a little slow to pick up on our requests for the game, the modding community always comes up with something to re-kindle my interest.

Some things we lost in Civ iterations after SMAC were: really beneficial results from wonders (getting an Aerospace Complex or Naval Yard in every city was a rush). Nowadays, everything is +1 here or 10% there; hardly immersive, annoyingly mathematical when one is striving for world domination. Typical is the BE tech, 'Terraforming'--I want to re-shape my world, not put a couple of pluses down on a hex.

As I said, trust Firaxis, they haven't let me down yet.

 

[Algeroth]

I could finish two games of SMAC in the time it takes to play a game of BE and the endgame doesn't drag, if anything, it passes too quickly.

Are we talking about the same SMAC endgame? Full of tedious micromanaging stacks of units, having to turn management of most cities to automated governors and seeing each turn hordes of mindworms suicide against my units?

As it ways said here before, don't look at SMAC through nostalgia-tinted glasses. The lore and immersion was great. The gameplay was on the sucky side, not only when we judge it by today standards.

 

[sherbz]

Are we talking about the same SMAC endgame? Full of tedious micromanaging stacks of units, having to turn management of most cities to automated governors and seeing each turn hordes of mindworms suicide against my units?

As it ways said here before, don't look at SMAC through nostalgia-tinted glasses. The lore and immersion was great. The gameplay was on the sucky side, not only when we judge it by today standards.

It was not much worse than civ 2, which is what it replaced (in fact it was probably better). City spam was also a problem in civ 3. It was only ever addressed sort of properly in civ 4.

SMAC had more micro though, especially with the design workshop. It was a blessing when i turned the "invent new items automatically" off.

 

[freshmaker]

I had to log in for the first time in probably a decade to chime in on this thread. Unlike many of you slackers and wastrels, this weekend I decided to rummage around some boxes, find a scratched-up CD, clean some kind of weird mold out of my computer's CD slot, and actually install SMAC.

I've played three games of Civ:BE, at increasing difficulty levels. I won the first two, and lost the third with two turns left after missing a notification that an opponent was working toward a victory. I find that once you get unique units, you can wipe out an opponent almost without casualties.

Right, so I installed SMAC and fired it up. It took me a few turns and even two bad starts to remember some of the UI quirks. But I am now well into my third game. Playing as the Gaians, I understand the responsibility all humans to protect and nurture Planet. My insidious and insufferable opponent, the so-called "Commissioner" Pravin Lal, has genocidally eliminated two other factions in the name of his unsettling "New World Order". Enlisting the forces of the very biosphere itself, my armies now march through his lands, capturing his cities and making sure that any survivors of the reeducation process understand how much more important Planet is than their petty "human rights".

My verdict? SMAC is still fantastic, while Civ:BE is kind of boring. Much like the new XCOM, SMAC has real flaws and exploitable mechanics, but, also like the new XCOM, it doesn't matter because it is a joy to play. I wish some of that joy had carried over into Civ:BE.

 

[Drakarska]

I had to log in for the first time in probably a decade to chime in on this thread. Unlike many of you slackers and wastrels, this weekend I decided to rummage around some boxes, find a scratched-up CD, clean some kind of weird mold out of my computer's CD slot, and actually install SMAC.

I've played three games of Civ:BE, at increasing difficulty levels. I won the first two, and lost the third with two turns left after missing a notification that an opponent was working toward a victory. I find that once you get unique units, you can wipe out an opponent almost without casualties.

Right, so I installed SMAC and fired it up. It took me a few turns and even two bad starts to remember some of the UI quirks. But I am now well into my third game. Playing as the Gaians, I understand the responsibility all humans to protect and nurture Planet. My insidious and insufferable opponent, the so-called "Commissioner" Pravin Lal, has genocidally eliminated two other factions in the name of his unsettling "New World Order". Enlisting the forces of the very biosphere itself, my armies now march through his lands, capturing his cities and making sure that any survivors of the reeducation process understand how much more important Planet is than their petty "human rights".

My verdict? SMAC is still fantastic, while Civ:BE is kind of boring. Much like the new XCOM, SMAC has real flaws and exploitable mechanics, but, also like the new XCOM, it doesn't matter because it is a joy to play. I wish some of that joy had carried over into Civ:BE.

Thank you for recognizing the slacker/wastrel club, been an official member for a long, long time .

Agree with your post as well, as the sheer entertainment value with SMAC is still epic.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

Yeah I actually wanted to fire up SMAC this weekend but it doesn't seem to run on my machine. It tries to load the game and then just crashes back to my desktop with no warnings or crash errors or anything, just bam, CTD. Can't even get to the main menu. And I'm too lazy to try to diagnose the problem when I could just play XCOM instead.

 

[PhilBowles]

Yeah I actually wanted to fire up SMAC this weekend but it doesn't seem to run on my machine. It tries to load the game and then just crashes back to my desktop with no warnings or crash errors or anything, just bam, CTD. Can't even get to the main menu. And I'm too lazy to try to diagnose the problem when I could just play XCOM instead.

SMAC is available cheaply on GoG.com, in a form that should work on modern machines (and does on mine). Replaying it, it failed to hold my interest for more than a couple of days - but then, so did BE.