I’d forgotten how fabulous this game is.

I’ve downloaded this game from GOG. It was always my favourite but I’d forgotten just how amazingly good this game is. It’s made me realise just how completely rubbish BE really is. The characters are so well formed and the Wonder vides still give me the chills. Unlike many Civ games, SMAC really has stood the test of time.

 

I downloaded it when a friend of mine told me GOG had it. This was the second Civ-style game I'd ever bought, after Civ2 (though I'd played Civ1 and the old DOS Colonization on another computer before I had my first PC, and I had gotten copies of Master of Magic and Master of Orion 2 from an old friend, and thus didn't BUY then, but I digress). It's an awesome game, and the Planet and faction concepts are lot more innovative and original from what I've read of the later Beyond Earth game.

 

I got ripped off with the purchase of a new computer that died within a month, and am currently stuck hobbling along on an old Win 7 machine that won't run modern games.
I concur with Tabieth that the cutscenes for Wonders really add a great deal to the feel and look of Alpha Centauri.

It is a game that really cries out for having the paper manual by your keyboard, however.

I theorize that limits on technology at the time the game was created were actually a good thing, forcing the designers to be more creative.
The mix of animation and actors in the Wonders cutscenes is really a blast.

Like the Windows 10 interface, many current games have a "chicklets" or "Fischer Price" baby toy feel / look to them.
All looks and no depth in play. Idiotic. Why create the graphics so demanding that you
automatically ensure that a huge percentage of computers (potential customers) can't run the game?

That's something worth having: A filter on Gog.com and Steam. You install something, it reads your computer
specs for you. From then on, when you look at the Game Store, it will only display games that will actually run
on your system. The Can I Run It site is useful, but this is needed.

Tabieth, you might enjoy another offbeat and old game: Black and White.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_&_White_(video_game)

Similarly, Civilization 2 had clever, fun, hilarious little "Advisor" movies with digitized human actors.
That is a game worth playing again. I think I may have played it on a Sony console.
I got the CD ROM disk used for probably a buck.
Confusing, tiny pixellated screen, but wonderful mechanics. Unless my memory is broken.

The Sega game Tyrants was pretty awesome also: clever voice acting in it.
Sold my consoles and games, wish I had not.
A woman bought them from me via Craigslist......not for herself.
It was sad. I had a strong vibe.....she was going to give them as a gift to some guy.
I could just tell....she was crazy in love with the guy, had nothing in common with him, but wanted to prove
her love by giving him something she hates, but he loves.
That relationship was doomed from the beginning. I could just picture the guy.

I've never been a fan of change for the sake of change.
Had a flip phone (dumb phone they are sometimes called ) until a girlfriend literally dragged me into an Apple phone store.
Seven hundred dollars for a phone!!
And it came with NO MANUAL. Hated that phone, hated the complexity, the interface.

Wound up on the Apple Forum asking, "For that amount of money, why no paper manual"?
Yes, you can get on the internet via the phone, try to find and memorize the "fix" you need, shift back to the phone. But that stinks.
Super snotty "moderator" jumped on the thread, claimed "We at apple didn't give out a paper manual, so we can save the planet and reduce our carbon footprint"

I then said, "Ok......so then why do you literally WELD the battery into the phone so that the whole thing has to be
thrown away instead of making the battery replaceable? Doesn't THAT **** up the planet a lot more than paper does?"

And this got me banned! There is literally a rule on the Apple forum that you cannot even IMPLY anything negative about Apple!
I'm dead serious.
That Windows 10 interface is the worst case of "It wasn't broken, so why did you fix it"

Sad that the plague prevents us from playing in person eurogames. But nice to think that Gog.com will get some new business.

 

Beyond Earth is decent. It's only the factions that are so bland.

 

Beyond Earth doesn't have the aliens, either. I loved the alien factions, and thought they really added something, and allowed the backstory of the strange world of Chiron to be explored from a different angle.

 

They do have other aliens. Much less philosophical and less enigmatic, but they're still fun.

Apparently, you never had a Kraken fleet while your brother discovered your cities

 

I just spotted the Planetary Pack on GOG for $5.99! I'm sure I paid more than that for the basic game years ago. I never got very good at SMAC, but it's definitely one of the greats in 4x games.