The reasons why Alpha Centaury is better than Civ 3

[57%]

Hey, I liked SMAC, I just like Civ3 better. In a perfect world I would take some elements of Civ3, some from SMAC...

Terrain: _Visually_ representing altitude with a 3D renderer took programming time (it's no trivial matter) that could have been better spent improving the design workshop interface, imho. I hated the design workshop interface, and avoided it like the plague. But having the altitudes _not shown as 3D_ would not have harmed the playability one bit. It just looked impressive, therefore, eye-candy. In my priorities, eye-candy comes after interface.

(btw, Civ3 unit animation toggles on/off in preferences.)


(The following was snipped without mercy)

Originally posted by Galen Dietenger

57% feels 3d terrain is simply eye candy. Well at least in SMAC terain elevation actually was integrated into the game and worked. To on the one hand say SMAC approach to terrain was no good, then excuse Civ3's for not includeing it, odd argument to make. Instead civ3 opted to animate every unit and display every figgen move they make leading to the notorius 15min turns. Who took the better approach again?

Dark and dreary comments.
-These are a little strange too, but some people like bright happy colors so thats ok. As someone pointed out, you can DL palettes to change SMAC 'look'. Terrain look alone however is a poor reason to deride a game, after all, intelligent gamers look to gameplay as the primary factor, 'looks' are of secondary (or lower importance). By that standard Civ3 has lots of nice 'eye candy' but has some real gameplay issues, which is why theres so many post on these topics. A subtle point that seems lost on some of the naysayers here. I wouldnt say SMAC terrain was the best ever, buts it far away from being as bad as some make it out to be.

Unit design workshop
-Ill admit its a little daunting to learn at 1st and even a bit confuseing, but once mastered its an incredible tool that adds great depth and replay value to the Title.

 

[Frodo Bolson]

I have taken into consideration only the things that could have been passed from one game to another. The nature of the game of Alpha Centaury wouldn't allow to have space travelers discovering the wheel, that would be stupid. They HAD to place Science advances not discovered yet (such us artificial petrol, secrets of human brain, the ecology of a different planet, etc). Remember, Alpha Centaury is very similar to Civilization but it's NOT that game. Also, I remember that when you have the list of advances to choose, each one had a little list in different fonts of the things it allows.

For example, the spaceship parts are the same gaming concept than the tribes, you enter there and found a bonus (gold, advance, unit, etc) or mind worms (=barbarians). I didn't expect to find tribes in the sea, but to find some thing that, if you enter inside, you can find a bonus or enemies.

And about the mind worms, the are the same as the barbarians, but they have an advantage: they can be both land, naval or air units. Civilization barbarians are still only land based. Of course, it might not be realistic to have air barbarians before the main civilization discovers the air units, but there weren't also air mind worms before air units appear in the game.

 

[jghoo]

For me the combat sys in Civ III is so bad I wont play it again unless its changed. I know that several people have posted that they like the fact that a swordsman can take out a tank or a galleon sink a battleship. They feel it adds some sort of special realisim. Well thats just swell. Nothing like the logic of a 12year old. Based on that logic Afganistan should be kicking our ass.

Number 1 reason SMAC is better than CIV III.
SMAC isnt a piece of sh*t.

 

[cutiestar]

jghoo i hate to go off topic, but you really forced me to, Afghanistan isn't kicking your ass because they are actually helping you, to capture the terrorists.

If you meant to say Bin Laden instead of Afghanistan, well again you are wrong, because at this moment Bin Laden has kicked your ass, he killed 5000 people, and destroyed a major american icon, and in return he has lost nothing. Afterall he couldn't give a flying sh$t about any of his followers that have been killed.

So what was it you were saying about minds of a 12 year old jghoo.

 

[RogueNine]

Originally posted by Galen Dietenger
Good grief some of the anti SMAC 'reasons' given here border on assinine.

Some examples of the howlers here.

Units all look the same
-Granted yes, but then again so do Civ3's, Civ3 has no great advantage\disadvantage in icons by comparison.

Couldnt 'tell' what a unit was
-For lazy people I can see this being a small issue. But evidently they didnt learn the game well enough to realize that not only can you custom tailor units, you can custom NAME them as well.(Hint: this goes a long way towards reduceing any residual confusion some of you might have faced) As an example I would call a garrison unit AAA-PSI garrison. That way I knew its specs and that it was a defensive unit with enhanced AA and PSI attack capability. Bombers were called Ground Attack Mark X and so on.
The unit icons so called 'sameness' never affected, to my knowledge anyones ability to play the game effectively.

57% feels 3d terrain is simply eye candy. Well at least in SMAC terain elevation actually was integrated into the game and worked. To on the one hand say SMAC approach to terrain was no good, then excuse Civ3's for not includeing it, odd argument to make. Instead civ3 opted to animate every unit and display every figgen move they make leading to the notorius 15min turns. Who took the better approach again?

And yes you can customize leaders names in SMAC np.....

Dark and dreary comments.
-These are a little strange too, but some people like bright happy colors so thats ok. As someone pointed out, you can DL palettes to change SMAC 'look'. Terrain look alone however is a poor reason to deride a game, after all, intelligent gamers look to gameplay as the primary factor, 'looks' are of secondary (or lower importance). By that standard Civ3 has lots of nice 'eye candy' but has some real gameplay issues, which is why theres so many post on these topics. A subtle point that seems lost on some of the naysayers here. I wouldnt say SMAC terrain was the best ever, buts it far away from being as bad as some make it out to be.

Unit design workshop
-Ill admit its a little daunting to learn at 1st and even a bit confuseing, but once mastered its an incredible tool that adds great depth and replay value to the Title.

So sorry, I forgot I wasn't allowed an opinion. lol

I guess bottom line is I like a realistic game, and SMAC isn't nearly as 'believable' as Civ 2 or 3. (No way it could be: Tough to be realistic when we don't know what the future will look like.. ) Turn-based games that span as long as SMAC and Civ 3 do have to captivate me. I have to feel like I'm in the game, that I'm actually running my Civilization. I just couldn't get that feeling in SMAC. In Civ 3 when I build a few tanks and start attacking some outlying cities I feel like I'm waging a war. In SMAC I felt like I was trying to seize that blue box-like city, on that ugly red-dark terrain, with my 10/5/2 units. I just didn't get the feeling that I was in control of a Civ, I felt like I was playing a game of chess. That make any sense?

I definitely can see how those concerns aren't all that important to some people, and as a pure stradegy game it seems very well-balanced. But that isn't my main goal. Hence why the problems with the combat system in Civ 3 isn't that big a deal for me, and why the new things like Culture are very cool. You guys are looking at it as a pure stradegy element, and in that sense I suppose its not all that big. But for 'getting into the game', it adds alot.

Bottom line? People play these turn-based stradegy games for different reasons. So obviously we're all going to have different opinions about them. Why is that so hard to understand?

 

[jghoo]

CUTIEEPIE,
You are specificly the type of individual the I am refering to.

Maybe my point would be easier for you to understand
if we were to nuke them (them being whomever it is we are fighting in Ragheadistan). Kinda like we did to Japan.

No matter what ******** rational you use TECH wins.



This statement is not ment to be an endorsement of nuking anyone.

 

[cutiestar]

jghoo if you nuked them, then i think you'd find you both will lose, with the air currents and all, infact my country may be the only country worth living in if you started the nuke thing.

So tech wouldn't win, it would just cause the loss for everyone including yourself, oops everyone except me and my country

 

[Jezner]

Couldnt 'tell' what a unit was
-For lazy people I can see this being a small issue. But evidently they didnt learn the game well enough to realize that not only can you custom tailor units, you can custom NAME them as well.(Hint: this goes a long way towards reduceing any residual confusion some of you might have faced) As an example I would call a garrison unit AAA-PSI garrison. That way I knew its specs and that it was a defensive unit with enhanced AA and PSI attack capability. Bombers were called Ground Attack Mark X and so on.
The unit icons so called 'sameness' never affected, to my knowledge anyones ability to play the game effectively.

My biggest grip with SMAC was that all the infantry units looked like wallmart stockboys pushing one of their wheelie carts in front of them. The planes sort skimmed the surface like pancakes. I only like the copters. For me the units were a big turnoff. And I don't consider myself lazy.

But don't get me wrong, I think it was a fun game. I never got into it because I couldn't make sense of the futuristic tech tree and what I really wanted in the end was Civilization.

Still, SMAC's planetary council KICKED. I really miss it in Civ 3. It was a major dissappointment for me.

Alas. sigh.

 

[thetigergirl]

I guess I was the only one who thought the tech tree wasn't different ENOUGH. All the stuff had different names, but to me the tech tree in AC was basically the tech tree in CII with 1)the names changed and 2)about a 30% expansion (someone's probably actually counted and going to flame me for a guess, but oh well) in number.

In other words...
CII--- build the great wall. get walls around your cities.
AC--- build a different wonder(name escapes me), get shiny forcefields around your cities.


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It seems to me that NO ONE has been able to repudiate the essential argument of the AC fans--- that the game play was just BETTER, and why in the world did Firaxis dump so many sucessful features? (my pet peeve: not being able to zoom in and out in steps).

The gripes about AC seem to be
1)I don't like the colors (download the color schemes).

2)I don't understand the tech tree (and I'm sure you understood EXACTLY what to do the first time you played half life (besides wander around and shoot), black and white, or even Civ I?)

3)The units have silly names (I, too, renamed mine. Specifially things like "Evil Spy Unit" and "Defender from H---") (And I'm sorry, but unless I look it up I'm not going to know what the difference between a War Chariot and an Elephant is besides the obvious)

and

4)The mind worms are hard to kill. (Yes. that means you are more challenged than vs. barbarians).

But when I step back and look at this these seem to be such minor points when compared to the immense complexity and game play available in AC.

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I've never had an AC game where if someone picked a fight (I usually play "pacifist"), I couldn't end the war by taking -1- of thier cities. CIII seems to be more war-mongery than AC b/c I've had to take over about 30% of another counties cities before they would cry peace.



:crazyeyes

 

[scavenger]

personally, I think these threads are semi-useless

"why Civ 2 was better then Civ 3"

"why AC was better then Civ 3"

"why half life is better then Civ 3"

"why PONG is better then Civ 3"

instead I think we should focus more on what is possible to do to to Civ 3 to improve it, instead of why other games were better, so start a thread, "things that should be improved in Civ 3, that are actually possible by the creation of a patch or a well made mod"

 

[Craterus22]

scavenger

When people focus on how to make civ3 better - the fanboys cryout in a high falsetto - Stop whining!

I think a topic like this can be helpful in comparing how portions of an ok game were far superior and if nothing else should have become the standard in the following games (especially a game designed by the supposed same group of people).

I was shocked into disbelief that the same group that had the Council in SMAC didn't believe that the UN in Civ3 was deserving of the same functionality(perhaps more in regard to scenerio makers who would be making modern mods).

It was nice to see that I am not alone - perhaps a thread like this will be more useful because we are comparing games to games and not games to history. Often when someone offers a suggestion based on realism someone will say - ITS A GAME! Well yeah no kidding... but games can be better.

Especially games in a long loved series that didn't include some of the better aspects of previous games and IMPROVE upon them... Instead some of the features were actually reduced in functionality...

 

[scavenger]

hmm, I see your point