It has been a long time since I've gone through the tutorials. I believe you only have the choice of the Spartans.
Have you played civ 2? Civ 2 was the immediate predecessor to SMAC.
If you are interested in some resources (I'm only going to suggest those that might be appropriate to a beginner), you might take a look at the articles in the
SMAC Academy. I'd suggest the articles on Crawlers, Pop-Booming, Social Engineering settings, Builder's Primer, Terraforming, Early Game Combat.
I like
Gamespot's Alpha Centauri Guide.
You can find the most important resource here at Civ Fanatics - experienced players who can answer your questions. Petek, who was recently made a moderator here, can refer you to interesting threads and posts in four different forums. GooglyBoogly has been working on
updating the in-game datalinks for ACX.
My suggestion is that once you get through the tutorials - and they are boring, just jump in and start a game in ACX playing the Peacekeepers, University or Gaians (and using the original AC factions to round out the field - Believers, Spartans, Morgan and Hive). Choose the Map of the Planet and play at the easiest level, Citizen. Use standard rules.
When the game comes up, you will get the option to take the tour of the interface. Go ahead and do so. Under Menu > Help are other tours, which are helpful. And take a brief look at Menu > Help > General Concepts (for now, just look at the entries).
Then play the game! As questions arise, just post them in this thread. I know that both Petek and I will be very happy to answer your questions. We can point you to the relevant pages in the manual (I suspect that sold-out didn't include a menu, but I think there is a forum that has the manual available for download -- we can PM that info to you) or to the in-game datalinks.
There are a lot of interesting aspects to explore. Diplomacy, the planetary council, probe teams, the unit design workshop, social engineering, crawlers, terraforming, secret projects, hurrying facilities and units, landmarks, native life, ecodamage, morale/lifecycle, talents, specialists, eco-damage, fungus.
Although there is a busier SMAC forum (which Petek can point you to), Petek, GooglyBoogly and I can answer all your questions in this thread.
It sounds to me that you'd like to know about how to clean Alpha Centauri.
(1) Plant forests early! They spread on their own into non-rocky squares and will displace fungus!
(2) Although the formers that come with Centauri Ecology will remove fungus, be sure to get the fungicidal tanks that come with Synthetic Fossil Fuels (formers with fungicidal tanks clean up the fungus twice as fast) and the superformers that come with Advanced Ecological Engineering (superformers clean up the fungus twice as fast -- once you get Neural Grafting, Synthetic Fossil Fuels and Advanced Ecological Engineering, you can have superformers with fungicidal tanks, which clean up fungus three times as fast.
(3) Be sure to keep your ecodamage low. Fungal blooms destroy terraforming and put more purple people eater plants!
(4) Use two or more formers at once. One former takes 6 turns to clear up fungus. Two formers take 3 turns. Three formers take 2 turns.
One way to quickly get into SMAC is the
Alpha Centauri Democracy Game, which Mart is running. They are only 13 turns in. Get a base to run. Volunteer to be a turnplayer.