Civ IV with space mod or Alpha Centauri?

[skaldicpoet9]

So in anticipation of BE I wanted to play some Civ. Unfortunately I don't really have a computer that can run Civ V (even though I own it damnit) but I can run Civ IV or Alpha Centauri just fine. I have never actually played Alpha Centauri (nor much of Civ IV for that matter, really) and thought it would be interesting to play the game that BE is the 'spiritual successor' to before I play BE to see what Firaxis took from AC. However, I have noticed that there are a fair amount of interesting looking space based mods for Civ IV. Civ IV is a little bit more polished and I would assume much more robust when it comes to features and game mechanics so I was wondering if maybe I should just install a Civ IV space mod for a similar experience? What do you guys think? Civ IV with mods or Alpha Centauri?

 

[tesb]

play alpha centauri. there is a mod that is heavily inspired by it for cIV called planetfall:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=278
and while it is very good, it is still a cIV mod and quite different from the original.

 

[Chapel]

Alpha Centauri. At least try it. You can always switch if for some reason you do not like it.

 

[Ari Rahikkala]

Yeah, you should definitely play Alpha Centauri first. But do give Planetfall a try, it is very well made. It always felt more like a sequel than a straight out remake to me, mostly because it kind of changes the context of what the game is about. SMAC has this big game-spanning story of discovery as Planet's secrets are revealed to you, which is fine, but you do get pretty familiar with it eventually. In Planetfall, you know precisely how Planet feels about you from turn one, and that attitude drives some very important diplomatic rules and modifiers, so it feels like the game's focus is not on discovering what Planet is all about but on the conflict over what to do with it.

e: Also in a direction vaguely similar to "Civ IV with space mod", Colonization: 2071 for CivCol can be worth a look at as well. It has some technical problems at least on my setup (slow unit movement) and I think it tries a bit too hard with the cyberpunk aesthetic, but I love its worlds full of incomprehensible alien constructs.

 

[MountainTiger]

SMAC is an amazing game in both its flavor and its mechanics, and you should definitely play it. The downside is that the balance and AI are horrible by modern standards, so if you aren't into optimizing for optimization's sake it can become stagnant quickly.

 

[Fabio1701]

play smac if you want to get into cbe in anticipation. If you never have, you owe it to yourself to try. How often have you already played civ4?

 

[skaldicpoet9]

I've only actually really played Civ IV a handful of times really. Almost all of my Civ gaming has been done on Civ V.

 

[s0nny80y]

Final Frontier mod by Jon Schafter, in my opinion, is teh best!

As much as I look forward to Beyond Earth, I'm still itching for a Final Frontier type mod for Civ 5 or BE.

 

[reddishrecue]

Alpha centauri seemed like a good game when I tried it out in the trial version. Final frontier had good games but I wasn't really into them since I stopped using it since there were other space scenarios in bts.