Thinking of getting Alpha Centauri...

[Quintillus]

Why should it be one of my top choices? Obviously it's civ-related, but what makes it better than Galactic Civilizations? Or any of the other newfangled games?

Also noticed there seems to be some compatibility problems with recent operating systems. I'm running Windows Vista on my laptop and am thinking of switching to XPI used to have Windows Vista, but now run XP, so ideally it would work on one (both?) of those.

^^It does run on XP! Not sure about Vista, got rid of it about the time I got Alpha Centauri.

And what's this "non-predefined unit" thing I'm reading about?

Units and combat

A unit is made up from different parts such as chassis, weapon, armor, reactor, and special ability slots. As new technologies become available, old designs may be brought up to date and existing units upgraded.

Generally, only friendly units (your own or those of an ally) can occupy the same square. Enemy units must be eliminated in order to move into their square. Combat is usually initiated when a unit belonging to one faction attempts to enter a square occupied by a unit/units of a hostile faction. Many factors affect the outcome of combat, including:
The attacking unit's weapon rating;
The defending unit's armor rating;
The hit points of both units, determined by the type of reactor used;
The morale status of both units;
Any attack or defense modifiers brought about by base facilities, Secret Projects, faction abilities and terrain effects.

Researching certain new technologies unlocks progressively better equipment (weapons, armor and reactors). Possessing certain support infrastructure (such as Command Centers), creating units with certain special abilities (such as High Morale), and having a positive morale rating in social engineering will all confer morale bonuses to new units; conversely, a negative morale rating will incur morale penalties on new units. Also, gaining access to the mysterious alien monoliths that dot the planet or defeating enough enemies to gain experience will upgrade an existing unit's morale.

Does this mean I create my own units? Instead of having a Pikeman or a Knight I could build a Knight-jousting-with-a-Pike (or the more modern equivalent of my familiar CivIII choices)?

 

[Aabraxan]

I've played SMAC, but not SMAX, and I've played Gal Civ (a little), but not Gal Civ II. I don't have any clue about compatibility with Windows Vista. With those caveats, I've run SMAC on XP without any troubles and it's a great game. Yes, you create your own units. There are plenty of predefined designs, but you can go into the Unit Workshop and create your own. It's been a while since I played, but IIRC, you can give them abilities like anti-aircraft or bombard, faster movement, heavier or lighter armor, depending on your needs and how much you want to spend for building and upgrading. To put it in Civ 3 terms, imagine building a 100-shield cavalry with bombard capability . . .

 

[sir_schwick]

Galactic Civilizations is a great game(haven't played II yet) which you should definitely play. But if you enjoy good, turn-based 4x games then you must also own SMAC. Both are very unique games that have implemented most if not all of their features and central concepts in ways I haven't really seen other games do since successfully. So think of it as one being a delicious tangerine, the other a honeybell orange. Neither can fully replace the other and you crave each at different moments.

And here I will attempt to clarify what the Unit Workshop is more clearly.

When you build units in your bases(i.e. cities), you choose them from a list that was created in your unit workshop. However inside the workshop a unit is composed of these parts:

A "chassis"
These are things like Infantry, Rovers(speeders, cars, etc.), Missles, Jets, Skimships. Most of these come as a result of research.

A "weapon"
Usually these modules come as a result of research. As in all Civ games, the useful properties of any weapon is simply a number, and no two weapon modules have the same number. Some things that are considered modules include "Probe Equipment" and "Terraformers" and "Colonizing Pods".

A "defense"
This is pretty straight forward, higher technology usually gives better number armor.

A "reactor"
If you remember in Civ II, Musketmen had 30 hitpoints instead of the usual 20 or 10 from the Ancient/Medieval era. That was part of why they were so useful and prolific at that point in the game. Well the "reactor" acts as the hit point multiplier. It also functions to lower costs, sometimes dramatically, of what could otherwise be very expensive later-game units. If I remember correctly, also most of the reactor giving techs were not on or closely related to the military branch, giving a slight balance against long-term Conquest technology rush players to Build players.

One or two "special abilities"
Special abilities are almost always researched. Late game they include the ability to pass through city defenses without giving the defender bonuses or using certain Secret Projects(Wonders) to orbitally drop anywhere on Planet's surface. But there are also many unique special abilities that were really neat.



Also this system gives units some natural special abilities once put together based on certain ratios of things in the unit. Rover military units get a bonus to attacking slower units in open terrain(although a later special ability can be given to units that effectively negate that bonus). Infantry with high attack get a bonus when attacking bases. You can also effectively create Probe Teams(spies) out of any chassis and add some weird special abilities. Whenever I could orbital drop pod, I would often create spies that dropped from the sky. Sea-going spies are quite common as well. You can also create flying-settlers if its in your whimsy.

 

[Quintillus]

So then every civilization will have different units, different variations of Cavalry, etc.? Sounds interesting. I like the idea of flying settlers. Sounds like Alpha Centauri is staying near the top of my Christmas list.

JSYK, I've never played Civ2 - didn't get into Civ until 2003. But the Musketman example still makes perfect sense thanks to Age of Empires.

 

[sir_schwick]

yes and no. If two factions have a unit built with the same parts, then the units are identical at that point. However there are other things that affect unit cost and performance in the field. The morale bonuses are much more numerous and finely quantized. They go from very green to commando(-25% in combat to +50%) in steps of 12.5%. Some factions specialize and certain Social Engineering choices change the starting morale of units. Also some improvements change the starting morale of units. Also some secret projects change parts of unit performance and cost.

 

[Aabraxan]

The ability to design my own units is always a bonus for me in strategy games. Do I want high-cost, heavily armored (but slow) Indestructomobiles? Or do I want very fast, cheap, expandable (& replaceable) Skirmishers? The SMAC Unit Workshop implements that idea pretty well. There are a limited number of slots for units, but you can delete obsolete designs to make room for new ones.

SMAC really has some other neat features that I enjoyed. For example, the game takes place on Planet, which is, in places, covered in xenofungus. Planet is also inhabited by mindworms. If you play as an industry-heavy, Planet-polluting nightmare, you'll likely face more mindworms. Out of nowhere, fungus will bloom across several tiles of your empire and mindworms can begin spawning oiut of the fungus. On the one hand, getting that fungus to bloom actually helps your industry in that it raises some sort of cap on mineral production (I forget exactly what). On the other hand, if you play as an ecologically-friendly, fungus farmer, you can actually capture the mindworms and use them as troops!

Also, if you have enough energy credits (money) and sufficiently advanced Probe Teams (spies), you can steal your opponent's troops.

If you wind up getting SMAC, I'd recommend a visit to Apolyton (which still has a moderately active SMAC community and CivGaming.Net's SMAC Academy for some good articles.

 

[gusi]

I have played heaps of SMAC and SMAX. It is a classic game, has similar feel to Civ and interface yet is quite different.

Dunno about vista support. I suppose you could try a virtual XP machine if you can't get it to run. Alternatively it runs fine on older machines. I have a 10 year laptop running w2k on 128k ram and I can run SMAC with huge maps on it.

 

[vyeh]

See this 'poly thread AC and Vista.

 

[CheScott]

I haven't played Galactic Civilizations at all, I probably should look into it.

SMAC is a fantastic game that I still play. The ability to design units is really very brilliant and well executed. It allows you to build exactly what you need in a unit without waste. So, if you're dealing with an opponent with a specific weakness, you aren't forced to build a very expensive unit only for the part of it that exploits that particular weakness. You can just go into your design workshop and put togeather a unit with the bare minimums plus whatever exploits your enemies weakness and start mass producing these effective and relatively inexpensive troops.

The trade off is that if you want a unit that has the best of everything, it's not going to be cheap. There really is no literal comparison to anything that any of the Civ games have used. It's completely new. The best comparison is saying that you have, say, horsemen or foot soldiers and you choose how to equip and armor either and what abilities to give them.

Another note on units is that there are a few units that design doesn't apply to, namely alien lifeforms. Alien lifeforms engage is 'Psi Combat' which is based entirely on 'morale' or the units level. You can capture and produce (after certain tech advances) these units, which provide a significant strategic function.

The ironic effect of this is that the Gaian (environmentalist) faction can be and often is an early game military powerhouse. Something I doubt any of the other faction leaders expected, when they seperated from Unity.

You mentioned something about being able to build 'settlers' (colony pods) with the ability to fly. Yes, that's one of the options, you can also build aquatic settlements. You can also build workers and spies on any type of chassis, and there are quite a few to choose from. Infantry, Rovers, Tanks, Needlejets, Choppers, and even Anti-Gravs that can traverse both land and water and don't need to return to base.

The game is filled with quotes (both historical/literary and based in the game world) and even has *gasp* a story line and really great sound effects that all serve to engross the player in the experince. I feel it's not a game any Civ gamer should miss out on.