Does Anyone Still Play This Game????

[sir_schwick]

Space Elevator plus drop units. Its kinda expensive but very effective at taking important bases. After that I use conventional rover/foot soldier to take what's left.

 

[Terje]

I never bulid the Space Elevator; it completely ruins my bases, with it's doubling of minerals when building orbital improvements...

but drop pods and orbital insertions are fun

 

[sir_schwick]

i really miss the eco-damage concept of SMAC in Civ 3

 

[Gelion]

And what was it? My SMAC died long before I could expolre it.

 

[sir_schwick]

whenever you had tons of terrain improvements and production, you got hit with a lot of random peanalties. energy sucking clouds, nutrient sucking clouds, plus the worms got really pissed off.

 

[Cyrus_the_Great]

Now that I re-installed both games and got them to work, I have been playing each night for the past couple of weeks. I am re-addicting myself.

 

[Lord Neil]

I still play and I have CivIV BtS

 

[Psyonif]

I still play and I have CivIV BtS

Ditto. I might go a handful of months or so without any AC, but I always come back to it.

And not only because Civ 4 won't work on my laptop.

 

[girlfan]

I just bought a copy of Alien Crossfire to go with my copy of SMAC. However, it tells me that my "cpu is not supported" and won't load. Any ideas of what I can do?

 

[Petek]

I just bought a copy of Alien Crossfire to go with my copy of SMAC. However, it tells me that my "cpu is not supported" and won't load. Any ideas of what I can do?

Open your Alpha Centauri.ini file in Notepad and add the following line in the [PREFERENCES] section:

ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1

Or, if ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=0 is already present, change the 0 to a 1. You'll still get the error message, but click OK and the game should now start.

Out of curiosity, where did you buy this almost-impossible-to-find game?

 

[girlfan]

Just luck - I've been watching out for it on and off for a very long time and found a used copy of the Alpha Centauri Planetary Pack - disk only - through the UK Amazon site. Really delighted, because although it cost more than a new modern game (it was £50), it was much cheaper than the silly prices I've seen it go for on Ebay.

I'm off to try your tip - thanks.

 

[Avelon]

I just discovered this game not too long ago and am greatly enjoying it. As a mainly Civ2 fanatic I'm finding it a little hard to adjust, but this game feels delicious. Conquest is so much more satisfying than it was in Civ2, and the AIs are greatly improved. Diplomacy is now actually a possibility - a rival Civ doesn't declare on you the second you elect to not give everything you have to them.

 

[Gelion]

Damn you guys! You know why

 

[Symphony D.]

So, is there a way to edit Alpha.ini to get the game to display higher resolutions properly?

When you set DirectDraw=0 it displays to whatever your desktop's current resolution is and stops using its own ******** palette, but when I load it up under 1600x1200 none of the buttons appear in the main game window and the in-game command console is set about halfway up the screen (though, the play window covers almost the entire screen, and the actually menu pops up below the console of all things). It's possible to use arrow keys to select things, but not when radio-button type menus pop up (and you have no clue what you're picking). Setting ds3d and eadx to 0 does nothing.

I would really rather not have to change my entire resolution every time I want to play, or be reduced back to 256 colors and 640x480 when playing the game (making it impossible to do anything else concurrently). I would imagine there's a solution that doesn't require either inconvenience, but I don't know what it is.

 

[Petek]

I run in native resolution 1280x1024, use DirectDraw=0 and don't see the screen artifacts that you describe. I'm running SMAX though, not SMAC, which makes a difference.

You can add the command Video Mode=800 or Video Mode=1024 (to Alpha Centauri.ini) to force the game to run at 800x600 or 1024x768 (and I think you also have to remark out the DirectDraw command).

You might want to try the suggestion in item #60 of the Apolyton FAQ to run the game in a window. I've never tried this, so can't vouch whether or not it works.

Petek

 

[Symphony D.]

I figured it'd be the same and hadn't thought to check it in SMACX; problem doesn't show up there. I guess I'll just run with it then. (I wanted to go back to SMAC for awhile to get more believable mileage out of the Mars map without resorting to creating a scenario)

Thanks.

 

[Robert Can't]

I think this game is great i love the diplomacy

 

[amicusterrae]

I love SMAC, and I still play it regularly. I enjoy making custom factions, maps, and scenarios. I also enjoy the Alien Crossfire expansion. I am in the middle of my first try as the Pirates right now. I played Civ III quite a bit for a while, but I found the military path in some of those games more tedious than in SMAC. I do like the dependence on strategic resources and colonies, though. That would be one added complexity to SMAC. As for CivIV, I haven't bought it. As much as I enjoy SMAC, I'm content to wait until it appears in the bargain bin! BTW, what does anyone think of Rise of Nations? I saw recently that it was Brian Reynolds' first game after leaving Firaxis.

 

[sir_schwick]

Spoiler OT Rise of Nations opinion :

I am a big fan of what Brian Reynolds did with a modern RTS. Some, including me, would call it an RTS version of Civilization. Your 'bases' are primarily cities which extend your territory. Your economy is driven by these cities, providing resources for military spending. Some interesting twists on these RTS foundations is inflation(limits collection per second amounts) and national borders(although AOE III used it extensively as well).

Combat now involves proper uses of formations, flanking, and actually discourages micromanagement of target assignment(except for critical enemies like logistics and generals).

Tech development over the game produces more gradual, but sometimes dramatic changes. Gunpowder truly changes how your unit classes interact, as well as armor, rifles, etc. Sometimes new resources will need to be collected, which are in a different location than your current strongholds. This can involves having to change direction in mid game or be aggressive.

Overall I am a big RoN fan b/c it did capture the aggressive history book feel, but only takes an hour or two to go from spears to nuclear winter

 

[Ashbery76]

I kinda forget about the game every few years and then have the urge to play.The game is still awesome.