I was 14 in 1999 when this game launched. It was almost singlehandedly responsible for a lifelong interest in political philosophy and then by extension history for me. As a teenager I found some of the Aristotle and Plato quotes so compelling, I picked up copies of The Republic and Nicomachean Ethics at a used book store so that I could get the greater context of the quotes from the game. Later in my early 20's I was in a trades college, but I found the time to follow a free online Stanford course on political philosophy so that I could see how my personal understanding of the texts lined up against the academic understanding. I literally sought out university level education in an effort to understand quotes from this game. This interest and the time I've dedicated to it has served me well for decades at this point. I have to thank whoever on the writing staff was the poli sci nerd. Some of the texts the game references: Plato - The Republic, Symposium Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics Immanuel Kant - Critique of Pure Reason Friedrich Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra Niccolo Machiavelli - The Prince I also could have sworn it referenced Leviathan by Hobbes, but I can't find the quote if it did.
@@LumpyBumpyAcidFish How am I supposed to even respond to that? I would say that being exposed to political philosophy and coming to understand it allowed me to greatly broaden and give context to political views I had from my upbringing. It allowed me to come to understand multiple perspectives on the nature of power and authority. It also allowed me to understand civics as they function today much better because of an understanding of the context from which the institutions of modern states arose. So is having greater context and understanding for why things are the way they are and how they function 'wrong'? I mean if you're a wingnut sure. Left or right, if you're some 'I DO MY OWN RESEARCH' insufferable conspiracy theory dupe then yeah, you'd probably think most of the things I understand to be correct are wrong. But you'd also be an insufferable conspiratorially minded whackjob, so I wouldn't really care what you thought. I'm sure that's not you though.
@@LumpyBumpyAcidFish -- I can't speak for the OP, but SMAC made it impossible for *me* to have a reasonable conversation about economics. Ecological models have principles which comport with the laws of thermodynamics. Economics most emphatically *does not* and to bring it up is anathema.
This quote will live rent free in my head till the day I die... "Beware of he who would deny you access to information for in his heart he dreams himself your master." - Commissioner Lal.
The full quote is so optimistic in retrospect given how things have turned out 20+ years later, that the information age would have the governments "struggle" to maintain control rather than coopt it
In my opinion, a big reason that SMAC is so beloved is because unlike most media it is not afraid of SAYING something. Not just post-ironic satire that's gesturing towards saying something but not actually commiting to it, either. It also doesn't present only one view, or two opposed views, but multiple overlapping views in which all agree & disagree with eachother in part. It also does not arbitarily soften or sharpen edges for the sake of making everyone seem equally bad or good.
it does a really good job of recontextualizing various factional rhetoric as the game progresses to. Like it is almost as easy to hate Miriam as much as Yang but over time she's right so much and antiauthoritarian in a way that's endearing, fundamentalist ancaps, similarly you have to look very hard to start appreciating how evil Deirdre really is.
@@WildFungus I find the books really help with this too. I might be crazy, but I think a well done tv series in this settings would reach GoT levels of popularity.
@@WildFungusDierdre is evil?!? I'd feed you to the mindworms if I was not such a Planet loving Dierdre simp. For real tho, I loved sending out a boil to farm for more pearls or for more infantry.
@@jhackofalltrades I played deirdre cuz I thought she was hot and I was a young lad who made decisions like that, and then like I read the manual and I probably read what each factions bonuses are, but like all I remember to this day is Gaians get +1 to ecology. This breaks the game and makes it so easy because you can farmy barbarian worms the entire game non stop and do not have to worry about military or expansion, and the other factions are probably good but it's like not having problems with the mindworms is pretty OP. never ever really played anyone else.
I always thought that the people who called it "Civ 2.5" were close. That does show that it was a step forward that drew from the Civ games before it, improved on them, and was drawn on by later Civ games in turn. But what it could do that Civ by its very nature couldn't was story. The actual plot story, the characters, the side stories, and everything implied in all of those invented tech and project quotes. That's why I keep coming back.
In my opinion, Alpha Centauri was the first game to show that Civilization formula could expand beyond being a franchise and into an entire subgenre of 4X games. For example: "Pandora: First Contact", and the "Warlock" games.
Brian Reynolds deserves to be remembered as one of the most important game designers in the industry. Not only did he design Civ2, but he then said: This can be better, went on to design Alpha Centauri and then basically left the PC games industry. And as you pointed out, his amazing design has been copied and influencing future Civ games for decades. What a waste of talent to just work on casual games :(
You are mostly right, Brian Reynolds is a visionary and deserves far more recognition. As does Alpha Centauri, a game that was ahead of it's time, game that is still unsurpassed in some areas to this very day. However, Brian Reynolds did not leave the PC games industry right after Alpha Centauri. He designed another couple of games before doing that: Rise of Nations and Rise of Legends. Rise of Nations is like a real-time strategy Civilization game, or perhaps a mix between Age of Empires and Civilization in an RTS shell. And Rise of Legends is a fantasy (science fantasy to be more precise) spin-off, with some new features too.
What I remember exciting me a lot about AC was: Ingame VOIP. In 1999 this was pretty novel and groundbreaking. (Alternative was like MPlayer? (Anyone even remember that service? First time I heard a southern accent in real time as a Dane, good times)) The fact that you could design your own vehicles. If Beyond Earth had had this feature I might've actually played it. And of course, the planet being alive was a really interesting twist. I think Factorio was inspired by it as well.
When you think Alpha Centauri was just "Civ in space" and try to make a successor to that, you get Civ: Beyond Earth. Apart from the dated graphics and interface, even now the game feels weirdly fresh. It is actually a thought out science fiction game instead of the collection of popular tropes we tend to get nowadays. Damn, now I wanna play it again.
Civ II had that as well. The game came with a thick manual, a significant proportion of which was a modding guide. I think it's a great shame that there was relatively limited opportunity for people to share the mods they made, due to the internet being in its infancy at the time, but it at least made the development of the "Fantastic Worlds" expansion and the additional scenarios in the "Test of Time" remake easier.
I think you nailed it regarding how guilty this game can make you feel. The philosophy behind it is also overwhelming and worth reading all the LORE. For example, there are 3 books published pointing to philosophical dilemma between 2 factions. Lal vs Santiago on the means towards victory or Zakharov winning? vs Miriam. They are definitely worth reading
@@suedeciviii7142 😂 almost there. I have the three of them. I think I bought them on Amazon. They were not expensive but not cheap either. Let me know if you’re interested in me sending them to you. They are just getting dust somewhere. However I would want them back for sure 😏
The "Boss Baby school of media discourse" is such an apt way of describing a frustration I've had with, well, media discourse. I remember with the release of Humankind, nearly everyone was trying to brand it as a "Civ killer", or "Civ but you change civs throughout the game", etc. even when the devs denied that was what they were trying to be. I''m not even at fault either; when they announced the game on a stream I put in chat "is this civ 7?" as a joke which got a lot of reactions from other chat members. On another note, I've come to the conclusion that (at least for me) what makes a 4X game go from "good" to "great" is that it exudes personality. I've had Alpha Centauri on my backlog for years because I hear that's what makes it great. My favorite 4X game personally is Endless Space 2, and just going into the diplomacy screens feels different from faction to faction (Endless Legend even moreso, however I find it's early game frustrating as hell). That makes Humankind's release all the more frustrating even if I did enjoy it, because you can tell those devs are super good at putting personality into their games but effectively abandoned doing so for a new release. I suppose I really need to get around to playing Alpha Centauri, don't I?
Agreed. I don't even think it's malicious or intentional! Just, if one writer compares SMAC to Civ, and another compares it to Star Control 2 or something readers haven't played, the former article gets all the likes and shares and it makes it seem that the conversation is more narrow than really is.
I just remembered that the moment you start the game the nerve staple button is available. No need to research or build anything. And you don't need to access any menus. Just select a base. There it is. The guy in red about to regret being born. Just goes to show how bad things got on earth. Even brother Lal the supposed humanist can do it. And then with the punishment sphere the negative effects on the whole base is really dramatic. For a society that recognizes nerve stapling as something mundane like we understand jail time today, how bad must the punishment sphere be. A lot of the depth in SMAC is implied. And even if the devs want to show it, they don't have the hardware or software for it. But that makes it way more impactful. The brain is really good at filling in the blanks in a bad way. Anxiety and all that. Also, I remember that the punishment sphere for "interrogation" of a faction leader that lost a vendetta, you don't need to research any tech for it. Another random detail is if you screw up and your beginning base with one pop got mind wormed when your scout patrol was too busy looking for UN crates. You get the same cutscene of being "interrogated" in a punishment sphere. Which actually makes sense in that mind worms attack with psychological damage. All faction leader's deepest fear must be the punishment sphere. Must have been like the replacement to capital punishment back on earth. The interlude for getting eradicated by the aliens really hints at that. With the alien engineers specifically building a copy of a human punishment sphere after studying human psychology. And the interlude ends the moment the door closes. Implying that once it turn on, only outside intervention can save them. None of these elite of the elite prime human specimen can use any level of their outstanding willpower to endure it. Not even Yang. Makes me think if Brian Reynolds is philosophizing on the use of waterboarding and how dehumanizing it is.
Interestingly, nerve stapling is an atrocity and building the punishment sphere is not. But yeah, interesting how this punishment shows up 3 different places in the game's lore and in 3 different ways.
@@Veylon The key people behind SMAC have degrees in history and philosophy. So I wouldn't be surprised if Brian Reynolds knows about the waterboarding during the Spanish inquisition.
Per the GURPS book, Punishment Sphere involves nerve stapling being applied every five minutes, instead of every five hours, as usual, while being encased in a semi-transparent sphere for everyone else to see as an example. Nerve stapling itself involves having a probe stuck in your spine and brain and then used to create whatever sensations the operator wants... interestingly enough, not necessarily pain. I have a suspicion the animation for Virtual World secret project may be related, especially given the quote.
I mean, a Doom Clone often: > Ran on the doom engine > Had the same HUD > Had gameplay consisting of exploring the map for keys to unlocking new sections so you could get to the exit... A lot of them were indeed clones. It took time for unique things to develop. Imagine if all movies involved babies for like 3 years before someone thought to put SOMETHING ELSE as the protagonist.
Great addition here. It wasn't just the crates. Genres often start out as derivative before flourishing into something unique. I don't think anyone in their right mind would say that First Person shooters, as a genre, were inherently derivative and unimaginative, but due to a mix of budget limitations, audience expectations, and just plain laziness, many titles ended up that way. But franchises like Duke Nukem have their own cultural legacy now we can talk about them without prefacing everything with "Oh hey, this game is kind of like Doom". AC hasn't been afforded that in relation to Civ, and I think it's because most people simply haven't played many 4X games. (I've read online that Alpha Centauri ran on a modified version of Civ 2's engine, but I couldn't get confirmation on that, and if true I think it's an interesting parallel with Doom.)
@@suedeciviii7142 As someone who lived through that Era of gaming, albeit as a youngling I have some thoughts. To my recollection, before Doom those games were just called 'shooters'. Like Catacombs Abyss 3d and Wolfenstein 3d existed before Doom, they were just 'shooters'. The 'Doom Clone' label came in the wake of Doom's massive mainstream success, where companies rushed to smash out their own version of Doom in a year or two to cash in on the trend. Keep in mind Quake only came out a couple years later. The era of the 'Doom Clone' was pretty short lived, and post Quake, 'Doom Clone' was more of a pejorative to describe a game which hadn't kept up with the rapidly advancing technical expectations of the day. You know, your TekWar kind of fare. It was a way of saying 'your game looks like it's from 1993 bro'. Certainly by 1998 they were 'First Person Shooters'. I was a regular reader of PC Gamer magazine as a kid. While I haven't gone back and checked, I'm pretty sure you'll find they were using the genre term by like 1996 or 1997. So we're talking maybe 3 or 4 years of the 'Doom Clone'. Doom is huge today because of 2016 and Eternal being able to distill and modernize much of its core gameplay identity. Quake languished after becoming a largely multiplayer only title, then being surpassed by other IPs. But people forget back in 1996, Doom was mostly forgotten. Quake was huge. There's a reason Id's annual convention is called Quakecon. Ultimately Doom aged as the better game. Quake was carried largely on its technical achievements on not on actually being much fun to play. Its full 3d and graphical achievements haven't aged well, and no one cares about how it normalized online play anymore. It had a weak singleplayer campaign, while Doom is still a blast to play to this day. Anyways, old man rambling at this point.
@@peterkorisanszky2950 No, this is a good contribution to the story. I wasn't broadly tapped into developments in gaming until the mid 2000's so I'm not quite sure the exact breakdown of how this term was used justifiably vs how often it was just the critic being closeminded. I still hold to the broader point that this is an issue when people talk about games (And off topic but ESPECIALLY music. Most people can recognize 2 similar game mechanics but even huge music fans are often unable to tell if two songs share similar chord progressions, etc) But maybe the example I used wasn't the best one. Ironically, when criticizing others for criticizing with a shallow frame of reference... I myself may have had a shallow frame of reference :)
This conforms to my recollection too. "Shooters" was the main term, before fps became a thing. I never heard "doom clones" until relatively recently, mainly it seems because "+clone" is all the rage rn. If it even vaguely resembles anything else, it's a *that* clone. Which makes me wonder exactly *who* not what the clones are. And yeah, D&D was in part derived from Chainmail, which was (like Civ/SMAC) developed by the same guy, and I think your point, which I was going to make, is that *every* rpg of any kind was derived from or at minimum inspired by D&D, even when it attempted to do the same thing with different mechanics and a unique pov or focus. (SMAC is a D&D clone, by some twist of this illogical logic, because you're playing a role with numerically defined characteristics.) So, for example, I don't like Doom or Quake, but Quake II was and is my jam. And as for that other game not using crates, it seems it still had pick-ups, they just weren't in crates. Genius! (he says sarcastically) btw, speaking of old, I played the original Civ board game in college. Before there was a videogame. So there.
Great essay! Judging by the quality of discourse surrounding it and the influx of amazing fan fiction 25 years after its release, SMAC has truly carved out quite a legacy.
What I love most about SMAC is the sheer amount of freedom it gives you as a player. The faction conversations give you a ton of options, the Workshop gives you tons of options to play around with customizations, the tech tree has a lot of variety, and so forth.
I haven't played it in a while, and it may very well be a perfectly serviceable game, but it certainly ignored everything that made SMAC special. I don't know if they didn't have the IP rights but why not at least copy over the factions?
can't be a spiritual successor if you got no soul to start with, however good your mechanics aren't. I played my roommate's copy for about 20 minutes then got bored and started a new game of Alpha Centauri.
If you ask me, Beyond Earth has some of the best mechanics out of all the civ games. It gets ignored a lot since its writing is so soulless, which is a real shame because I feel newer civ games could learn a thing or two from it. The writing falls short even before you compare it top shelf stuff like Alpha Centauri, its nominal predecessor. All the lore in the civilopedia is generic sci-fi fluff, it sucks. Also, I believe the IP was with EA and not Firaxis/2k, so they couldn't make a direct sequel.
I don't have anything useful to add, but as someone who fell in love with Alpha Centauri and has been playing it every year since 2003, I'm glad whenever I see it get more recognition. It really deserves it.
SMAC made me realize: "They use the space ones to experiment." SMAC Stellaris Age of Wonders: Planetfall Beyond Earth Each moved the developer from one planet to a space setting. Each threw a load of new mechanics against the wall. Only very few new mechanics worked and made it into the main series.
It's a game that flat out needs a remaster. 14 factions at once, fixing an OP tech line (looking at you Resonance anything), and adding more quotes for the Crossfire factions would breath new line into a game that should be played by everyone.
The crossfire factions distracted from the base storyline, and many of the new factions were just extreme versions of the old ones. I prefer the base SMAC over Alien Crossfire.
@@petersteenkamp If the factions could spawn mid game then they could have been an interesting addition to the base game, but the engine doesn't allow it. The only one that has a strong enough identity to stand on its own is the Free Drones.
I love that the "nice" save the planet faction also uses armies of psychic mind worms that paralyze enemy soldiers with their own fear before burrowing into their brains. The hippies have the literal nightmare fuel army.
Alpha Centauri introduced ranged attacks also, which Civ 3 then used again siege units. I honestly hated that Civ 4 got rid of this ability for siege units, while appreciating keeping the air attack mechanic from Civ 3, which Alpha Centauri hadn't yet introduced.
There are a couple thing I'd like to note about Alpha Centauri as being some of my favourite things: First, you play against all the other factions just like other Civ games but you also play against a secret enemy: The Planet. You are starkly aware that you are on a hostile world and every action you take to pacify it for your own safety only increases your danger. Mindworms, fungal blooms, and even climate change are all a result of damage to the Planet and either you wage ceaseless war against the Planet, which only ramps up, or you learn to live in harmony with nature and find the fungal blooms are some of the best tiles in the game (alongside forests). I'd also like to talk about the diplomacy which always felt much more dynamic and responsive than all but the newest Civ games. The lore and even all the technologies were so interwoven with the factions that each one felt not only more fleshed out, but pivitol to the game. Even when you researched Centauri Ecology or Non-Linear Mathematics, it felt like you were just learning about it from the Gaians or the Academy. However, Alpha Centauri diplomacy had something that NO other civ game managed: constantcy. Most civ games a peace treaty lasted as long as it took for the AI to betray you, and no matter what you did or how happy they were with you on turn 10, by turn 11 they hated you with a passion. In Alpha Centauri, as long as you followed similar civics you could be reasonably assured of an ally pretty much the whole game. What's more, though, is a mechanic I have never seen implemented anywhere else: Submission. If you wiped out a faction's military and were approaching their cities they could not only sue for peace but surrender unconditionally whereupon they would be unfailingly loyal and vote with you in Planetary Council, trade with you, and defend you in war for the rest of the game. I think the only way to break their submission status is for YOU to betray THEM by declaring war on them. Otherwise you just got an AI tributary for life.
Alpha Centuri was the game where I most embraced megalomania and accumulated power beyond any other, I played The Hive and played out multiple scenarios, from nuking everyone to having 20,000 military units at top tier, I love this game and it was far more advanced and brilliant than Civilization has ever achieved
Look at the amount of fanfiction that civ3 and alpha centauri have on civfanatics. Civ 3, might have less soul than AC, but it has larger story-writing community nonetheless.
that sounds like a video topic in of itself. Is it an old writing community thats kept going, or is something about civ iii making people write about it?
@@Rynewulf I checked the forum now and it seems that community has not kept going : ( Last time I read some civ 3 stories was before the forum was changed. Back then (5 years ago maybe) there was a shitload of stories based on peoples games, some written over years and even decades (some with hundreds of pages), but they don't seem to be available on the website anymore. I wasn't talking about NES's though.
@@krzychuz7203 Aw that sucks, its always a shame when old forums die out because of tech changes. There's something about the current form of internet that seems to hostile to communities like forums in general
Would really like to see Mohawk Games make a spiritual successor. I think they'd have the best shot of recapturing the vibe and a lot of the systems and philosophies in Old World would suit an AC2 incredibly well.
Love this game so much, I only started playing it last year. Some of the cutscenes for the wonders are so disturbing and powerful. My favorite is The Cloning Vats.
I loved that game, was moved and transformed by that game, and might even play it again. Discovered a University nerve gas atrocity win that was op af. The "we must dissent" tech cutscene stuck with me forever.
God I also just love all of the pre-rendered cgi aesthetic from PC games in this time period. All the shots of buildings, units, and the cut scenes are just dripping with stylization. I really wish more games and media would use this kind of art style more often.
@@suedeciviii7142 Right!!! Like companies are sooo focused on making everything look as photo realistic as possible that they forget about the stylization and then everything just looks the same. 😅
I have many soundbites from this game burned into my memory. The game had such an intriguing storyline, but I was a little disappointed with the novels. I've given up on hoping for a sequel or "spiritual successor" even if something was made it wouldn't ""hold up"" since so much has changed in the world and myself. It's cool to hear people talk about old games like this.
Even 20+ years after its release I occasionally go back to AC. In fact, I have a game going right now as the Gaians. For a few years I even wrote some online fan fiction back in the early 2000s with a group of like-minded individuals (the 'Spartan Chronicles'). The graphic are a bit dated, but the gameplay beats the others in the Civ franchise hand down. AC just has the immersion down pat. My friends and I spent so many hour in AC. As you said, actions have consequences - I like that. And playing a faction has real benefits and penalties. I liked playing as the Gaians for the increased efficiency (more cities) and the planet bonus (so I could capture mind worms), and then the University for the free network nodes. I hated militaristic Yang and the Believers. I can't say that I 'hated' any of the factions in the Civ franchises.
Glad to have found your channel, from your colab with Lemoncake. I must say I am guilty of too often quoting chairman Yang's essays on mind and matter about suffering...
Thanks! What strategy games do you play btw? I'm trying to get a feel for how to branch out with my channel. Half of my videos on Civ 3, half on.... something else.
@@suedeciviii7142 Recently I played Millennia by paradox, Rome Total War, Age of wonders 4 , Master of Orion by wargaming. And EU4, Civilization 2 and 4 of course.
This is the greatest Civ game ever made and one that hasn't left my hard drives in 25 years. IMO this was Firaxis's peak, they've been on a downward trajectory ever since.
I really wanted to play Alpha Centauri on GOG, but my preferred style of play when it comes to any game in this genre is "hotseat game against myself", and I could never get it to work. Sad, because I love the game's concept.
@@suedeciviii7142 If I recall correctly, I couldn't save or load hotseat games. It's been a while, so I'd have to try again to be sure, but I just got a new laptop and not everything is set up yet.
There’s really not much on Civ2: Test of Time. Which had a fantasy version, a scifi version out in the Lalande system, and the Extended Original version that had you colonize Alpha Centauri while still ruling Earth too.
@@suedeciviii7142 Looking forward to it! Wish I could make it work again on my laptop, and just take my time to appreciate those worlds and tech trees and everything again.
SMAC was the first civ game i outright owned and i remember playing for literally hours. It was also my first experience to being able to mod games The cutsomisable units in the game is what i use as the gold standard and it one of the reason why myself and others were kind if disappointed with Civ4BE.
@@hoi-polloi1863Morale and psi Def are the only important stats to Def against native life. Best advice for formers is to obsolete the default land one and just have rover formers instead as a later upgrade for formers only workers for rover formers and you can't upgrade between different chassis types. Extra armour can be expensive for rover chassis early game.
This game has such a hold on everyone who played it. There's a mobile app terraforming game, TerraGenisis, and it has all the references and easter eggs calling back to alpha centauri
While Bruce Shelley showing Sid Meier Avalon Hill's 1830 and Civilization created the initial spark for what would become Railroad Tycoon and Civilization, from a game design perspective, Civilization was Sid's attempt at creating an improved version of Walter Bright's Empire. In that sense, the game was very much a "clone" in same manner that early FPS games like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D were to Wolfenstein. Of course, when people use(d) the term clone to refer to a game, they're referring it to the first example of a genre they're familiar with, not the first to actually exist. Civilization was just the first game of the broader 4X/grand strategy genre to really breach containment and find broad appeal outside of what was until then the pretty hardcore and insular wargaming fandom. And FPS games likewise existed since at least the 70s, but it wasn't until id software found a way to make them palatable to the masses that they really took off.
Roguelikes are a good comparison too. Absolutely no one is using Rogue as a reference point in 2024, but we get what the tag means, and I think the genre name is more useful. Still, games from the 80's and 90's did have more of a mechanical resemblance to Rogue, and that's ok.
Over the past year I got into a game that really reminded me of getting in Alpha Centauri for the first time - Shadow Empire. It's a weird comparison, as it has almost no lore, or faction identity as AC did, but somehow while playing it I get an all too familiar feeling of venturing into an unknown world.
I've played every iteration of Civ. Being able to play the original is one of the reasons I bought my first PC back in the 90's. I've got over 2.5k hours in CIV VI. But I still miss Alpha Centuri.
We are never getting anything like SMAC again. Corporate overlords wouldn't allow that these days, too much wrongthink in the game, someone might get offended.
And when at last it is time for the transition from megacorporation to planetary government, from entrepreneur to emperor, it is then that the true genius of our strategy shall become apparent, for energy is the lifeblood of this society and when the chips are down he who controls the energy supply controls Planet. In former times the energy monopoly was called "The Power Company"; we intend to give this name an entirely new meaning. CEO Nwabudike Morgan "The Centauri Monopoly"
"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
Well I remember this quite good being 12 in 2000 and seeing first time the movie that triggers after first loss to mind worms. I came to apreciate this game much, much later in my mid 20s. It was to complex, to dark and to serious for a kid. Also You are some random, that I have seen for first time and You made me play this game again xD
SMAC was my favorite game for nearly two decades until it was unseated by Pandora and Age of Wanders Planetfall, both of which were clearly heavily inspired by Alfa.
Could you make a video about how to use the scenerio/map editor? Especially how to start a game one you've created a map? (There may be a bug that prevents this). You can also supposedly make the game play itself... would be awesome to run SMAC simulations
I played it back in the day I wanted to say it was dark ... and depressing. Civ on an easy setting was always a happy game a world I could make into a nice world and succeed. Alpha Centauri was always something disfigured even on an easy setting one never had the feeling of green meadows and forests and seas oh no it was all red and mind worm infested and one horror came after the other and even when it was on easy setting one did not feel like at least a corner of the virtual reality is all right because I ruled it right.
Alpha Centauri is legendary. One thing it does that no Civ entry was capable of was to tell a well written story that adapts to what happens in the world which is of course dependent on what the player does. Yes a lot of it is based on "obvious" triggers and once you played it more than once you see a lot of repeat. But still the first time (first few times) it is grand!
I dont think Alpha Centauri needs another sequel. Arguably it already had two sequels in Alien Crossfire and Beyond Earth, and both are dissapointing with respect to the writing of their main characters. Firaxis caught lightning in a bottle with SMAC, and a lot of it comes down to the excellent writing and characterisation.
Alien Crossfire is an expansion that didn't change the fundamental mechanics. The game's mechanics, sadly, often encourage tedious ICS, and the systems from Civ 2 often don't fit well. I could write a whole paragraph about how the despotism penalty, despite its many shortcomings, existed for a few valid reasons in Civ 2 and Civ 3. And that none of those reasons apply to Alpha Centauri. The game would benefit from a fresh set of core mechanics with the same story (and Beyond Earth didn't really offer the same story) I agree though that the factions in Alien Crossfire really missed the mark tonally. They are based around gimmicks, when the factions from the initial game were based around ideals, things that could guide humans philosophically as they entered the unknown.
There are two kinds of scientific progress: the methodical experimentation and categorization which gradually extend the boundaries of knowledge, and the revolutionary leap of genius which redefines and transcends those boundaries. Acknowledging our debt to the former, we yearn nonetheless for the latter.
1:01, 4:48, 9:26 - forever farm and solar collector gamer? xD Forests -> Fungus for ease of use Farm/Condenser/Borehole and crawler spam for tryharding - no collector required
I'm a bit of a noob so don't read too much into my terraforming choices! I went Weather Project each game just to get a feel for the advanced terraforming options. That being said, I've recently become forest-pilled and that's what you're likely to see in my next stream.
Whenever I build a city, I immediately build a terraformer, build a road back to a nearby town, then just automate the former. Big time saver, and good enough results.
And as insurance build some quantum chamber planet busters for those last bases you do not need or want. Sister Miriam on some faraway island...have a rocket!
Sid Meyers got to expand the ideas of civilization into something new: being scifi gave it the space to grow. I kinda think it is an improved and expanded civ 2, but that's not a bad thing. Better is better.
In smac you could terraform better than anytime before. And maybe in minecraft you can change the landscape more than in smac. Terraformers are the best unit in game.
My only complaint was in the combat: Weapon Vs Armour. My defensive units had no weapons, but really good armour. My vehicle units where the opposite, aircraft in particular as they hid in bases. Why have armour if the unit was only ever used to attack? Why have weapon if the unit was only ever used to defend?
What I still love about SMAC to this day is the complete customisability of your military units. Even if some of the combinations are beyond useless, the fact you can make almost any unit you want is amazing freedom of choice. Oh, and Hail To the Spartans
I was always a Lord's Believers lad. I liked Miriam's suspicion of technology in a space game, and always thought it was hilarious that their tech malus pushed me so often to have to build a massive army and "zerg-rush" the Spartans... ;D
I couldnt get into civilizations, but loved SMAC. I remember back in the day I finished it with all factions except the believers because screw those guys. With some on impossible too. I haven't played in over 20 years but the game's faction quotes stuck with me to this day.
"Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill." Chairman Morgan Gosh how great and overpowered was the economy social engineering despite its huge costs. Morgan, the space Mansa Musa
I have a game but I always feel like I cant even start playing it because its so old and "unappealing" but at the same time I have a strong attraction for it lol
I love this game! Never been a particular fan of Civilization, as it a bit too generic to my taste, as I am more into theme. Alpha Centauri is forever in my heart, would be amazed to see a remake of it at some point.
The biggest plus in this game you mentioned, the government system. I'm so glad they went with this rather than generic governments like you saw in Civ 2 or Civ 3. It's easily the best part of this game (that and the terraforming). The game does have its shortcomings. It almost forces you to conquer your neighbors because they just won't stop warring you. It's difficult to play as a peaceful game. You could argue it's truly a 4X game unlike other entries in the Civ series where you didn't really need to do one of the X's.
The AIs are dicks, but if you adopt their preferred social policies, they can be bros too. The AI is generally pretty aggressive, but it's not as bad as Civ 2.
You simply must admit that the inclusion of Civ II's FMV advisors would have improved the experience of Alpha Centauri immeasurably. I wanted to see Human Hive Elvis.
Deidre's council slowly turning into Planetlife/human hybrids along the way would also have been interesting to see, although hers is perhaps the version of the Planet Visions that makes most sense. (It's much funnier to do the hybrid ascension victory as the cybernetic consciousness for how *dissonant* it is)
@@Whatsuppbuddies Remember when you beat an opponent? With your opponent hanging in the air spreadeagled before being tortured and the door closing ominously? Gave me the heebie jeebies.
In contention for my favourite game of all time, certainly top 3. Once your eyes get used to it, it is still a deep and very playable game, I love the unit editor and terraforming.
Playable is definitely how I'd describe it. Once you get the hang of it everything is reasonably easy to access. I do think most maps are too big though
I was 14 in 1999 when this game launched. It was almost singlehandedly responsible for a lifelong interest in political philosophy and then by extension history for me. As a teenager I found some of the Aristotle and Plato quotes so compelling, I picked up copies of The Republic and Nicomachean Ethics at a used book store so that I could get the greater context of the quotes from the game. Later in my early 20's I was in a trades college, but I found the time to follow a free online Stanford course on political philosophy so that I could see how my personal understanding of the texts lined up against the academic understanding. I literally sought out university level education in an effort to understand quotes from this game. This interest and the time I've dedicated to it has served me well for decades at this point. I have to thank whoever on the writing staff was the poli sci nerd.
Some of the texts the game references:
Plato - The Republic, Symposium
Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics
Immanuel Kant - Critique of Pure Reason
Friedrich Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Niccolo Machiavelli - The Prince
I also could have sworn it referenced Leviathan by Hobbes, but I can't find the quote if it did.
You can thank Brian Reynolds. SMAC is his baby.
let me guess
you got everything about politics and history wrong but tout it as correct
@@LumpyBumpyAcidFish How am I supposed to even respond to that? I would say that being exposed to political philosophy and coming to understand it allowed me to greatly broaden and give context to political views I had from my upbringing. It allowed me to come to understand multiple perspectives on the nature of power and authority. It also allowed me to understand civics as they function today much better because of an understanding of the context from which the institutions of modern states arose.
So is having greater context and understanding for why things are the way they are and how they function 'wrong'? I mean if you're a wingnut sure. Left or right, if you're some 'I DO MY OWN RESEARCH' insufferable conspiracy theory dupe then yeah, you'd probably think most of the things I understand to be correct are wrong. But you'd also be an insufferable conspiratorially minded whackjob, so I wouldn't really care what you thought. I'm sure that's not you though.
@@LumpyBumpyAcidFish -- I can't speak for the OP, but SMAC made it impossible for *me* to have a reasonable conversation about economics. Ecological models have principles which comport with the laws of thermodynamics. Economics most emphatically *does not* and to bring it up is anathema.
@@Grizabeebles being an intellectual is a fools errand
you should just know incorrect from correct and be done with it
"Please don't go. The Drones need you. They look up to you", has been living rent free in my head for about 25 years.
"Get back here, you peacekeeping son of a"
Lives in mine.
Same here
When you quit out of Surviving Mars. It has that same message as a reference to this game.
Yup, me too
Resources exist to be consumed is the one for me
This quote will live rent free in my head till the day I die... "Beware of he who would deny you access to information for in his heart he dreams himself your master." - Commissioner Lal.
The full quote is so optimistic in retrospect given how things have turned out 20+ years later, that the information age would have the governments "struggle" to maintain control rather than coopt it
Not civ in space.
Civ on hallucinogenic nightmares induced by space worms.
Bad trip, man.
Captain is dead, and you crash.
It's also on another planet, not space.
In my opinion, a big reason that SMAC is so beloved is because unlike most media it is not afraid of SAYING something. Not just post-ironic satire that's gesturing towards saying something but not actually commiting to it, either.
It also doesn't present only one view, or two opposed views, but multiple overlapping views in which all agree & disagree with eachother in part. It also does not arbitarily soften or sharpen edges for the sake of making everyone seem equally bad or good.
Yes! Letting some characters be good guys, some be villains, and letting some villains be worse than others.
it does a really good job of recontextualizing various factional rhetoric as the game progresses to. Like it is almost as easy to hate Miriam as much as Yang but over time she's right so much and antiauthoritarian in a way that's endearing, fundamentalist ancaps, similarly you have to look very hard to start appreciating how evil Deirdre really is.
@@WildFungus I find the books really help with this too. I might be crazy, but I think a well done tv series in this settings would reach GoT levels of popularity.
@@WildFungusDierdre is evil?!? I'd feed you to the mindworms if I was not such a Planet loving Dierdre simp. For real tho, I loved sending out a boil to farm for more pearls or for more infantry.
@@jhackofalltrades I played deirdre cuz I thought she was hot and I was a young lad who made decisions like that, and then like I read the manual and I probably read what each factions bonuses are, but like all I remember to this day is Gaians get +1 to ecology. This breaks the game and makes it so easy because you can farmy barbarian worms the entire game non stop and do not have to worry about military or expansion, and the other factions are probably good but it's like not having problems with the mindworms is pretty OP. never ever really played anyone else.
We must dissent.
I always thought that the people who called it "Civ 2.5" were close. That does show that it was a step forward that drew from the Civ games before it, improved on them, and was drawn on by later Civ games in turn.
But what it could do that Civ by its very nature couldn't was story. The actual plot story, the characters, the side stories, and everything implied in all of those invented tech and project quotes. That's why I keep coming back.
In my opinion, Alpha Centauri was the first game to show that Civilization formula could expand beyond being a franchise and into an entire subgenre of 4X games.
For example: "Pandora: First Contact", and the "Warlock" games.
Brian Reynolds deserves to be remembered as one of the most important game designers in the industry. Not only did he design Civ2, but he then said: This can be better, went on to design Alpha Centauri and then basically left the PC games industry. And as you pointed out, his amazing design has been copied and influencing future Civ games for decades.
What a waste of talent to just work on casual games :(
>>Barges into the gaming industry
>>Makes Civ 2
>>Makes SMAC
>>Fucks off making pay to win trash mobile games
>>Refuses to elaborate
Didn't he also make colonization? Or was that another guy?
@@BrandonWilliams-wf6hg Checking now, yes! Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds
You are mostly right, Brian Reynolds is a visionary and deserves far more recognition. As does Alpha Centauri, a game that was ahead of it's time, game that is still unsurpassed in some areas to this very day.
However, Brian Reynolds did not leave the PC games industry right after Alpha Centauri. He designed another couple of games before doing that: Rise of Nations and Rise of Legends. Rise of Nations is like a real-time strategy Civilization game, or perhaps a mix between Age of Empires and Civilization in an RTS shell. And Rise of Legends is a fantasy (science fantasy to be more precise) spin-off, with some new features too.
Made his Opus and got his dollar. Can't imagine a better balance for someone.
What I remember exciting me a lot about AC was: Ingame VOIP. In 1999 this was pretty novel and groundbreaking. (Alternative was like MPlayer? (Anyone even remember that service? First time I heard a southern accent in real time as a Dane, good times))
The fact that you could design your own vehicles. If Beyond Earth had had this feature I might've actually played it.
And of course, the planet being alive was a really interesting twist. I think Factorio was inspired by it as well.
When you think Alpha Centauri was just "Civ in space" and try to make a successor to that, you get Civ: Beyond Earth.
Apart from the dated graphics and interface, even now the game feels weirdly fresh. It is actually a thought out science fiction game instead of the collection of popular tropes we tend to get nowadays.
Damn, now I wanna play it again.
"resources exist to be consumed, and consumed they will be" rolls through my head at least once a month, decades later.
This game needs a remaster.
NO. it needs a revival. But our can't Nairn because creative genius men like us were forced out of the having industry and technocrats in 2007-12ish
I don't have much trust in how that would turn out given modern trends in game development
Another charm to SMAC is that it was coded in English with the intent that players could easily customize it.
Civ II had that as well. The game came with a thick manual, a significant proportion of which was a modding guide. I think it's a great shame that there was relatively limited opportunity for people to share the mods they made, due to the internet being in its infancy at the time, but it at least made the development of the "Fantastic Worlds" expansion and the additional scenarios in the "Test of Time" remake easier.
I think you nailed it regarding how guilty this game can make you feel. The philosophy behind it is also overwhelming and worth reading all the LORE. For example, there are 3 books published pointing to philosophical dilemma between 2 factions. Lal vs Santiago on the means towards victory or Zakharov winning? vs Miriam. They are definitely worth reading
I'm going to check if they have an audio book for it.
I just did and all I could find was one about centaurs
@@suedeciviii7142 😂 almost there. I have the three of them. I think I bought them on Amazon. They were not expensive but not cheap either. Let me know if you’re interested in me sending them to you. They are just getting dust somewhere. However I would want them back for sure 😏
I tried to find them and you can see 2/3 plus there is a comic that I also have. Try searching “sid meier alpha centauri Michael ely”
@@GROller86 Sadly I am a very slow reader and have switched only to audiobooks nowadays. Thank you very much for the kind offer though!
I wouldn't be so sure about that. They're fucking depressing. (Yes, way more depressing than the game.) The comic book is kind of cool though.
I have legit used the quote, "Human Behavior is Economic Behavior" complete with attribution to Nwabudike Morgan in business presentations.
It is very close to views of Ludwig von Mises and other Austrian school economists.
The "Boss Baby school of media discourse" is such an apt way of describing a frustration I've had with, well, media discourse. I remember with the release of Humankind, nearly everyone was trying to brand it as a "Civ killer", or "Civ but you change civs throughout the game", etc. even when the devs denied that was what they were trying to be. I''m not even at fault either; when they announced the game on a stream I put in chat "is this civ 7?" as a joke which got a lot of reactions from other chat members.
On another note, I've come to the conclusion that (at least for me) what makes a 4X game go from "good" to "great" is that it exudes personality. I've had Alpha Centauri on my backlog for years because I hear that's what makes it great. My favorite 4X game personally is Endless Space 2, and just going into the diplomacy screens feels different from faction to faction (Endless Legend even moreso, however I find it's early game frustrating as hell). That makes Humankind's release all the more frustrating even if I did enjoy it, because you can tell those devs are super good at putting personality into their games but effectively abandoned doing so for a new release. I suppose I really need to get around to playing Alpha Centauri, don't I?
Agreed. I don't even think it's malicious or intentional! Just, if one writer compares SMAC to Civ, and another compares it to Star Control 2 or something readers haven't played, the former article gets all the likes and shares and it makes it seem that the conversation is more narrow than really is.
Great video. I tried out Alpha Centauri again recently and the themeing and narrative were very appealing to me. Thank you friend.
Glad you enjoyed it!
This game has god-tier voice acting and world-building. One of, if not the best hard sci-fi world I've seen created.
I just remembered that the moment you start the game the nerve staple button is available. No need to research or build anything. And you don't need to access any menus. Just select a base. There it is. The guy in red about to regret being born. Just goes to show how bad things got on earth. Even brother Lal the supposed humanist can do it. And then with the punishment sphere the negative effects on the whole base is really dramatic. For a society that recognizes nerve stapling as something mundane like we understand jail time today, how bad must the punishment sphere be. A lot of the depth in SMAC is implied. And even if the devs want to show it, they don't have the hardware or software for it. But that makes it way more impactful. The brain is really good at filling in the blanks in a bad way. Anxiety and all that. Also, I remember that the punishment sphere for "interrogation" of a faction leader that lost a vendetta, you don't need to research any tech for it. Another random detail is if you screw up and your beginning base with one pop got mind wormed when your scout patrol was too busy looking for UN crates. You get the same cutscene of being "interrogated" in a punishment sphere. Which actually makes sense in that mind worms attack with psychological damage. All faction leader's deepest fear must be the punishment sphere. Must have been like the replacement to capital punishment back on earth. The interlude for getting eradicated by the aliens really hints at that. With the alien engineers specifically building a copy of a human punishment sphere after studying human psychology. And the interlude ends the moment the door closes. Implying that once it turn on, only outside intervention can save them. None of these elite of the elite prime human specimen can use any level of their outstanding willpower to endure it. Not even Yang. Makes me think if Brian Reynolds is philosophizing on the use of waterboarding and how dehumanizing it is.
Interestingly, nerve stapling is an atrocity and building the punishment sphere is not. But yeah, interesting how this punishment shows up 3 different places in the game's lore and in 3 different ways.
Alpha Centauri predates waterboarding being reclassified as an "enhanced interrogation technique".
@@Veylon The key people behind SMAC have degrees in history and philosophy. So I wouldn't be surprised if Brian Reynolds knows about the waterboarding during the Spanish inquisition.
Per the GURPS book, Punishment Sphere involves nerve stapling being applied every five minutes, instead of every five hours, as usual, while being encased in a semi-transparent sphere for everyone else to see as an example. Nerve stapling itself involves having a probe stuck in your spine and brain and then used to create whatever sensations the operator wants... interestingly enough, not necessarily pain.
I have a suspicion the animation for Virtual World secret project may be related, especially given the quote.
@@JackPhoenixCz Is the GURPS book canon?
I mean, a Doom Clone often:
> Ran on the doom engine
> Had the same HUD
> Had gameplay consisting of exploring the map for keys to unlocking new sections so you could get to the exit...
A lot of them were indeed clones. It took time for unique things to develop. Imagine if all movies involved babies for like 3 years before someone thought to put SOMETHING ELSE as the protagonist.
Great addition here. It wasn't just the crates. Genres often start out as derivative before flourishing into something unique. I don't think anyone in their right mind would say that First Person shooters, as a genre, were inherently derivative and unimaginative, but due to a mix of budget limitations, audience expectations, and just plain laziness, many titles ended up that way.
But franchises like Duke Nukem have their own cultural legacy now we can talk about them without prefacing everything with "Oh hey, this game is kind of like Doom". AC hasn't been afforded that in relation to Civ, and I think it's because most people simply haven't played many 4X games.
(I've read online that Alpha Centauri ran on a modified version of Civ 2's engine, but I couldn't get confirmation on that, and if true I think it's an interesting parallel with Doom.)
@@suedeciviii7142 As someone who lived through that Era of gaming, albeit as a youngling I have some thoughts. To my recollection, before Doom those games were just called 'shooters'. Like Catacombs Abyss 3d and Wolfenstein 3d existed before Doom, they were just 'shooters'. The 'Doom Clone' label came in the wake of Doom's massive mainstream success, where companies rushed to smash out their own version of Doom in a year or two to cash in on the trend. Keep in mind Quake only came out a couple years later. The era of the 'Doom Clone' was pretty short lived, and post Quake, 'Doom Clone' was more of a pejorative to describe a game which hadn't kept up with the rapidly advancing technical expectations of the day. You know, your TekWar kind of fare. It was a way of saying 'your game looks like it's from 1993 bro'. Certainly by 1998 they were 'First Person Shooters'. I was a regular reader of PC Gamer magazine as a kid. While I haven't gone back and checked, I'm pretty sure you'll find they were using the genre term by like 1996 or 1997. So we're talking maybe 3 or 4 years of the 'Doom Clone'.
Doom is huge today because of 2016 and Eternal being able to distill and modernize much of its core gameplay identity. Quake languished after becoming a largely multiplayer only title, then being surpassed by other IPs. But people forget back in 1996, Doom was mostly forgotten. Quake was huge. There's a reason Id's annual convention is called Quakecon. Ultimately Doom aged as the better game. Quake was carried largely on its technical achievements on not on actually being much fun to play. Its full 3d and graphical achievements haven't aged well, and no one cares about how it normalized online play anymore. It had a weak singleplayer campaign, while Doom is still a blast to play to this day.
Anyways, old man rambling at this point.
@@peterkorisanszky2950 No, this is a good contribution to the story. I wasn't broadly tapped into developments in gaming until the mid 2000's so I'm not quite sure the exact breakdown of how this term was used justifiably vs how often it was just the critic being closeminded. I still hold to the broader point that this is an issue when people talk about games (And off topic but ESPECIALLY music. Most people can recognize 2 similar game mechanics but even huge music fans are often unable to tell if two songs share similar chord progressions, etc)
But maybe the example I used wasn't the best one. Ironically, when criticizing others for criticizing with a shallow frame of reference... I myself may have had a shallow frame of reference :)
This conforms to my recollection too. "Shooters" was the main term, before fps became a thing. I never heard "doom clones" until relatively recently, mainly it seems because "+clone" is all the rage rn. If it even vaguely resembles anything else, it's a *that* clone. Which makes me wonder exactly *who* not what the clones are. And yeah, D&D was in part derived from Chainmail, which was (like Civ/SMAC) developed by the same guy, and I think your point, which I was going to make, is that *every* rpg of any kind was derived from or at minimum inspired by D&D, even when it attempted to do the same thing with different mechanics and a unique pov or focus. (SMAC is a D&D clone, by some twist of this illogical logic, because you're playing a role with numerically defined characteristics.) So, for example, I don't like Doom or Quake, but Quake II was and is my jam. And as for that other game not using crates, it seems it still had pick-ups, they just weren't in crates. Genius! (he says sarcastically) btw, speaking of old, I played the original Civ board game in college. Before there was a videogame. So there.
@@MemphiStig
I remember PCFormat using the term in the early nineties ('91-'94 at least) so it's not new.
Great essay! Judging by the quality of discourse surrounding it and the influx of amazing fan fiction 25 years after its release, SMAC has truly carved out quite a legacy.
What I love most about SMAC is the sheer amount of freedom it gives you as a player. The faction conversations give you a ton of options, the Workshop gives you tons of options to play around with customizations, the tech tree has a lot of variety, and so forth.
Beyond Earth was supposed to be the spiritual successor of this game, but it fell short.
Very, very short. It lost the soul even as it tried to refine and update the mechanics and interface.
I haven't played it in a while, and it may very well be a perfectly serviceable game, but it certainly ignored everything that made SMAC special. I don't know if they didn't have the IP rights but why not at least copy over the factions?
can't be a spiritual successor if you got no soul to start with, however good your mechanics aren't. I played my roommate's copy for about 20 minutes then got bored and started a new game of Alpha Centauri.
If you ask me, Beyond Earth has some of the best mechanics out of all the civ games. It gets ignored a lot since its writing is so soulless, which is a real shame because I feel newer civ games could learn a thing or two from it. The writing falls short even before you compare it top shelf stuff like Alpha Centauri, its nominal predecessor. All the lore in the civilopedia is generic sci-fi fluff, it sucks.
Also, I believe the IP was with EA and not Firaxis/2k, so they couldn't make a direct sequel.
Gameplay in BE is nothing to write home about either, gets boring after few sessions
I don't have anything useful to add, but as someone who fell in love with Alpha Centauri and has been playing it every year since 2003, I'm glad whenever I see it get more recognition. It really deserves it.
SMAC made me realize: "They use the space ones to experiment."
SMAC
Stellaris
Age of Wonders: Planetfall
Beyond Earth
Each moved the developer from one planet to a space setting.
Each threw a load of new mechanics against the wall.
Only very few new mechanics worked and made it into the main series.
Imagine what comes when the humanity gets to space IRL. I mean for real, not just orbiting.
It's a game that flat out needs a remaster. 14 factions at once, fixing an OP tech line (looking at you Resonance anything), and adding more quotes for the Crossfire factions would breath new line into a game that should be played by everyone.
Agreed about fleshing out the Crossfire Factions. They were a bit neglected.
The crossfire factions distracted from the base storyline, and many of the new factions were just extreme versions of the old ones. I prefer the base SMAC over Alien Crossfire.
@@petersteenkamp Gaians -> Cult of the planet seems like a downgrade in storytelling
@@petersteenkamp If the factions could spawn mid game then they could have been an interesting addition to the base game, but the engine doesn't allow it. The only one that has a strong enough identity to stand on its own is the Free Drones.
I love that the "nice" save the planet faction also uses armies of psychic mind worms that paralyze enemy soldiers with their own fear before burrowing into their brains. The hippies have the literal nightmare fuel army.
Lorax approves.
Even back in 2000, the Gaians struck me as "evil" from the get go based on their vibe. Even before the mind worm reveal
Alpha Centauri introduced ranged attacks also, which Civ 3 then used again siege units. I honestly hated that Civ 4 got rid of this ability for siege units, while appreciating keeping the air attack mechanic from Civ 3, which Alpha Centauri hadn't yet introduced.
Calling SMAC Civ II in space is like calling Counter Strike Half Life without aliens. Or calling StarCraft Warcraft in space.
Team Fortress is just Cold War Gary's mod
Hahahaha@@suedeciviii7142
"It's much more sophisticated!" "I know it's not 3d!"
@@RobotsEverywhereVideos Haha. You clicked on him too many times.
There are a couple thing I'd like to note about Alpha Centauri as being some of my favourite things: First, you play against all the other factions just like other Civ games but you also play against a secret enemy: The Planet. You are starkly aware that you are on a hostile world and every action you take to pacify it for your own safety only increases your danger. Mindworms, fungal blooms, and even climate change are all a result of damage to the Planet and either you wage ceaseless war against the Planet, which only ramps up, or you learn to live in harmony with nature and find the fungal blooms are some of the best tiles in the game (alongside forests).
I'd also like to talk about the diplomacy which always felt much more dynamic and responsive than all but the newest Civ games. The lore and even all the technologies were so interwoven with the factions that each one felt not only more fleshed out, but pivitol to the game. Even when you researched Centauri Ecology or Non-Linear Mathematics, it felt like you were just learning about it from the Gaians or the Academy. However, Alpha Centauri diplomacy had something that NO other civ game managed: constantcy. Most civ games a peace treaty lasted as long as it took for the AI to betray you, and no matter what you did or how happy they were with you on turn 10, by turn 11 they hated you with a passion. In Alpha Centauri, as long as you followed similar civics you could be reasonably assured of an ally pretty much the whole game. What's more, though, is a mechanic I have never seen implemented anywhere else: Submission. If you wiped out a faction's military and were approaching their cities they could not only sue for peace but surrender unconditionally whereupon they would be unfailingly loyal and vote with you in Planetary Council, trade with you, and defend you in war for the rest of the game. I think the only way to break their submission status is for YOU to betray THEM by declaring war on them. Otherwise you just got an AI tributary for life.
Alpha Centuri was the game where I most embraced megalomania and accumulated power beyond any other, I played The Hive and played out multiple scenarios, from nuking everyone to having 20,000 military units at top tier, I love this game and it was far more advanced and brilliant than Civilization has ever achieved
One of the best games out there, for sure.
Look at the amount of fanfiction that civ3 and alpha centauri have on civfanatics. Civ 3, might have less soul than AC, but it has larger story-writing community nonetheless.
And this is for a game without a proper single player campaign or story mode!
that sounds like a video topic in of itself.
Is it an old writing community thats kept going, or is something about civ iii making people write about it?
@@Rynewulf I think he might be talking about NES? Never Ending Story.
@@Rynewulf I checked the forum now and it seems that community has not kept going : ( Last time I read some civ 3 stories was before the forum was changed. Back then (5 years ago maybe) there was a shitload of stories based on peoples games, some written over years and even decades (some with hundreds of pages), but they don't seem to be available on the website anymore.
I wasn't talking about NES's though.
@@krzychuz7203 Aw that sucks, its always a shame when old forums die out because of tech changes.
There's something about the current form of internet that seems to hostile to communities like forums in general
Would really like to see Mohawk Games make a spiritual successor. I think they'd have the best shot of recapturing the vibe and a lot of the systems and philosophies in Old World would suit an AC2 incredibly well.
Love this game so much, I only started playing it last year. Some of the cutscenes for the wonders are so disturbing and powerful. My favorite is The Cloning Vats.
I loved that game, was moved and transformed by that game, and might even play it again. Discovered a University nerve gas atrocity win that was op af. The "we must dissent" tech cutscene stuck with me forever.
Actually, Alpha Centaurui IS civilization in space....
Not exactly. It's Civilization on another planet 🙃
God I also just love all of the pre-rendered cgi aesthetic from PC games in this time period. All the shots of buildings, units, and the cut scenes are just dripping with stylization.
I really wish more games and media would use this kind of art style more often.
Some HD remasters of games from that era absolutely do not get what made their graphics so charming
@@suedeciviii7142 Right!!!
Like companies are sooo focused on making everything look as photo realistic as possible that they forget about the stylization and then everything just looks the same. 😅
Civ 2 is Alpha Centauri on Earth.
I have many soundbites from this game burned into my memory. The game had such an intriguing storyline, but I was a little disappointed with the novels.
I've given up on hoping for a sequel or "spiritual successor" even if something was made it wouldn't ""hold up"" since so much has changed in the world and myself.
It's cool to hear people talk about old games like this.
Even 20+ years after its release I occasionally go back to AC. In fact, I have a game going right now as the Gaians. For a few years I even wrote some online fan fiction back in the early 2000s with a group of like-minded individuals (the 'Spartan Chronicles').
The graphic are a bit dated, but the gameplay beats the others in the Civ franchise hand down. AC just has the immersion down pat. My friends and I spent so many hour in AC. As you said, actions have consequences - I like that. And playing a faction has real benefits and penalties. I liked playing as the Gaians for the increased efficiency (more cities) and the planet bonus (so I could capture mind worms), and then the University for the free network nodes. I hated militaristic Yang and the Believers. I can't say that I 'hated' any of the factions in the Civ franchises.
I loved that fanfic series, was so sad when it petered out
Glad to have found your channel, from your colab with Lemoncake.
I must say I am guilty of too often quoting chairman Yang's essays on mind and matter about suffering...
Thanks! What strategy games do you play btw? I'm trying to get a feel for how to branch out with my channel. Half of my videos on Civ 3, half on.... something else.
@@suedeciviii7142 Recently I played Millennia by paradox, Rome Total War, Age of wonders 4 , Master of Orion by wargaming. And EU4, Civilization 2 and 4 of course.
@@lanelesic Age of Wonders 4 looks quite cool. Wondering if I should check it out
Literally my favorite game ever!
This game defines my teenage years really. Still one of my top games ever, even over any other Civ or other colony games.
Whenever people ask me if video games can be art, I point them to Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri as an example.
This is the greatest Civ game ever made and one that hasn't left my hard drives in 25 years. IMO this was Firaxis's peak, they've been on a downward trajectory ever since.
The cinematics were so good. Really sold the world
I really wanted to play Alpha Centauri on GOG, but my preferred style of play when it comes to any game in this genre is "hotseat game against myself", and I could never get it to work. Sad, because I love the game's concept.
What was the issue? I just launched and hotseat seemed to work fine.
@@suedeciviii7142 If I recall correctly, I couldn't save or load hotseat games. It's been a while, so I'd have to try again to be sure, but I just got a new laptop and not everything is set up yet.
@@suedeciviii7142It was something to do with saving and loading hotseat games. Been a while, I don't remember the exact problem.
Playing Lal and my first UN action is to repeal the UN charter... ahhh the memories
Are you gonna do Beyond Earth or the Civ4 Colonization spinoff?
Yes, but not until I get my new computer. This one has been producing choppy footage of newer games, including Civ 4
There’s really not much on Civ2: Test of Time. Which had a fantasy version, a scifi version out in the Lalande system, and the Extended Original version that had you colonize Alpha Centauri while still ruling Earth too.
@@ghostdreamer7272 I have 15 hours of Civ 2 ToT footage already hahah. The video will come.
@@suedeciviii7142 Looking forward to it! Wish I could make it work again on my laptop, and just take my time to appreciate those worlds and tech trees and everything again.
@@suedeciviii7142 love to hear it and I will be eagerly awaiting ;)
Great commentary on the game. In hindsight, the combination of artistic creativity and intellect that went into the game seems unreal.
Boys: Morgan is best.
Men: Lal is best.
Great men: Zakharov is best.
Gentlemen: Santiago is best.
SMAC was the first civ game i outright owned and i remember playing for literally hours.
It was also my first experience to being able to mod games
The cutsomisable units in the game is what i use as the gold standard and it one of the reason why myself and others were kind if disappointed with Civ4BE.
The fact you could make stuff like flying settlers is absolutely wild
@@suedeciviii7142One of the things I build the most is probe team ships!
Try dropping some armor onto your terraforming units, you'll thank me later! Makes them almost immune to wild fungoids.
@@hoi-polloi1863Morale and psi Def are the only important stats to Def against native life.
Best advice for formers is to obsolete the default land one and just have rover formers instead as a later upgrade for formers only workers for rover formers and you can't upgrade between different chassis types. Extra armour can be expensive for rover chassis early game.
It's so refreshing to listen to such an inteligent commentary!
A good love letter that pulls out its important contributions to the broader genre.
This game has such a hold on everyone who played it. There's a mobile app terraforming game, TerraGenisis, and it has all the references and easter eggs calling back to alpha centauri
*Reads the title* Exactly! It's more than that, it's what we've been trying to tell you! It's a story that you get to play your own retelling of.
Shamefully, I was getting it confused with the Civ 2 ToT sci fi mode. I thought I had played it when I hadn't.
The first true storytron.
Brilliant, phenomenal essay on the concept of what a game is and what appreciation of a game should be!
While Bruce Shelley showing Sid Meier Avalon Hill's 1830 and Civilization created the initial spark for what would become Railroad Tycoon and Civilization, from a game design perspective, Civilization was Sid's attempt at creating an improved version of Walter Bright's Empire. In that sense, the game was very much a "clone" in same manner that early FPS games like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D were to Wolfenstein.
Of course, when people use(d) the term clone to refer to a game, they're referring it to the first example of a genre they're familiar with, not the first to actually exist. Civilization was just the first game of the broader 4X/grand strategy genre to really breach containment and find broad appeal outside of what was until then the pretty hardcore and insular wargaming fandom. And FPS games likewise existed since at least the 70s, but it wasn't until id software found a way to make them palatable to the masses that they really took off.
Roguelikes are a good comparison too. Absolutely no one is using Rogue as a reference point in 2024, but we get what the tag means, and I think the genre name is more useful. Still, games from the 80's and 90's did have more of a mechanical resemblance to Rogue, and that's ok.
Marvellous video. I always wanted to get into alpha centauri, always lacked time or money. Now in my 40s I'm going to do it!
Thank you for this, it was better than any of the Civs.
Over the past year I got into a game that really reminded me of getting in Alpha Centauri for the first time - Shadow Empire. It's a weird comparison, as it has almost no lore, or faction identity as AC did, but somehow while playing it I get an all too familiar feeling of venturing into an unknown world.
I've played every iteration of Civ. Being able to play the original is one of the reasons I bought my first PC back in the 90's. I've got over 2.5k hours in CIV VI. But I still miss Alpha Centuri.
We are never getting anything like SMAC again. Corporate overlords wouldn't allow that these days, too much wrongthink in the game, someone might get offended.
More like the other side would call the Gaians gay and accuse the Chinese leader faction of being Communist brainwashing
And when at last it is time for the transition from megacorporation to planetary government, from entrepreneur to emperor, it is then that the true genius of our strategy shall become apparent, for energy is the lifeblood of this society and when the chips are down he who controls the energy supply controls Planet. In former times the energy monopoly was called "The Power Company"; we intend to give this name an entirely new meaning.
CEO Nwabudike Morgan "The Centauri Monopoly"
"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
Well I remember this quite good being 12 in 2000 and seeing first time the movie that triggers after first loss to mind worms. I came to apreciate this game much, much later in my mid 20s. It was to complex, to dark and to serious for a kid.
Also You are some random, that I have seen for first time and You made me play this game again xD
SMAC was my favorite game for nearly two decades until it was unseated by Pandora and Age of Wanders Planetfall, both of which were clearly heavily inspired by Alfa.
You earned a sub with this one.
You are someone with distinguished taste, I see
@@suedeciviii7142 I like to think so
Wow. Amazing video!
Makes me want to try try Alpha Centauri now!
Could you make a video about how to use the scenerio/map editor? Especially how to start a game one you've created a map? (There may be a bug that prevents this). You can also supposedly make the game play itself... would be awesome to run SMAC simulations
Might be worth doing. "How to make simple edits with the map editor".
@@suedeciviii7142thanks for your consideration! :)
Brian Reynolds is one of the best designers. Colonization and Rise of Nations are of my favorite games!
I played it back in the day I wanted to say it was dark ... and depressing.
Civ on an easy setting was always a happy game a world I could make into a nice world and succeed.
Alpha Centauri was always something disfigured even on an easy setting one never had the feeling of green meadows and forests and seas oh no it was all red and mind worm infested and one horror came after the other and even when it was on easy setting one did not feel like at least a corner of the virtual reality is all right because I ruled it right.
SMAC was awesome. I used to play it right after finishing a Civ2 game. Sort of a continuing roleplay.
Kind of like the expanded game option from Civ 2 Test of Time! But better hahah
Alpha Centauri is legendary. One thing it does that no Civ entry was capable of was to tell a well written story that adapts to what happens in the world which is of course dependent on what the player does.
Yes a lot of it is based on "obvious" triggers and once you played it more than once you see a lot of repeat. But still the first time (first few times) it is grand!
The scariest event is the comms blackout hahah
I dont think Alpha Centauri needs another sequel. Arguably it already had two sequels in Alien Crossfire and Beyond Earth, and both are dissapointing with respect to the writing of their main characters. Firaxis caught lightning in a bottle with SMAC, and a lot of it comes down to the excellent writing and characterisation.
Alien Crossfire is an expansion that didn't change the fundamental mechanics. The game's mechanics, sadly, often encourage tedious ICS, and the systems from Civ 2 often don't fit well. I could write a whole paragraph about how the despotism penalty, despite its many shortcomings, existed for a few valid reasons in Civ 2 and Civ 3. And that none of those reasons apply to Alpha Centauri. The game would benefit from a fresh set of core mechanics with the same story (and Beyond Earth didn't really offer the same story)
I agree though that the factions in Alien Crossfire really missed the mark tonally. They are based around gimmicks, when the factions from the initial game were based around ideals, things that could guide humans philosophically as they entered the unknown.
There are two kinds of scientific progress: the methodical experimentation and categorization which gradually extend the boundaries of knowledge, and the revolutionary leap of genius which redefines and transcends those boundaries. Acknowledging our debt to the former, we yearn nonetheless for the latter.
Is this a quote from in game?
@suedeciviii7142 Yeah! Theres so many good quotes!
1:01, 4:48, 9:26 - forever farm and solar collector gamer? xD
Forests -> Fungus for ease of use
Farm/Condenser/Borehole and crawler spam for tryharding - no collector required
I'm a bit of a noob so don't read too much into my terraforming choices! I went Weather Project each game just to get a feel for the advanced terraforming options. That being said, I've recently become forest-pilled and that's what you're likely to see in my next stream.
Whenever I build a city, I immediately build a terraformer, build a road back to a nearby town, then just automate the former. Big time saver, and good enough results.
Want to conquer quickly whole planet? Build a lot of Gravships with decent armament and armor.
And as insurance build some quantum chamber planet busters for those last bases you do not need or want. Sister Miriam on some faraway island...have a rocket!
Sid Meyers got to expand the ideas of civilization into something new: being scifi gave it the space to grow.
I kinda think it is an improved and expanded civ 2, but that's not a bad thing. Better is better.
In smac you could terraform better than anytime before. And maybe in minecraft you can change the landscape more than in smac. Terraformers are the best unit in game.
Alpha Centauri dark outlook proves that a Civilization domination victory is the morally correct way to win.
The "Sister Mariam has been captured" cutscene begs to differ
My only complaint was in the combat:
Weapon Vs Armour.
My defensive units had no weapons, but really good armour.
My vehicle units where the opposite, aircraft in particular as they hid in bases.
Why have armour if the unit was only ever used to attack?
Why have weapon if the unit was only ever used to defend?
They should give you a discount for making non-specialized units. Jack of all trades units are overpriced trash
It is such amazing game! Shame it was almost forgotten.
AC was my favorite of the civs because it let me design and name my own unit classes.
I also liked that once another faction submits to me, they are forever obedient. Never rebel later.
What I still love about SMAC to this day is the complete customisability of your military units. Even if some of the combinations are beyond useless, the fact you can make almost any unit you want is amazing freedom of choice.
Oh, and Hail To the Spartans
I was always a Lord's Believers lad. I liked Miriam's suspicion of technology in a space game, and always thought it was hilarious that their tech malus pushed me so often to have to build a massive army and "zerg-rush" the Spartans... ;D
6:43 That's so wholesome! Good to see creative writing and fanlore.
Alpha Centuri was my first experience. I absolutely loved the world and lore
Born in the children's creche, huh?
I couldnt get into civilizations, but loved SMAC. I remember back in the day I finished it with all factions except the believers because screw those guys. With some on impossible too. I haven't played in over 20 years but the game's faction quotes stuck with me to this day.
This game got me into science when I was younger. Im an engineer now!
"Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill."
Chairman Morgan
Gosh how great and overpowered was the economy social engineering despite its huge costs. Morgan, the space Mansa Musa
I have a game but I always feel like I cant even start playing it because its so old and "unappealing" but at the same time I have a strong attraction for it lol
i was on the fence before my viewers bullied me into it. Now I'm hooked
SMAC is definitely NOT Civ in space! It's action takes place on a planet 🙃
Even THE Planet.
I love this game! Never been a particular fan of Civilization, as it a bit too generic to my taste, as I am more into theme. Alpha Centauri is forever in my heart, would be amazed to see a remake of it at some point.
someone should make the centauri remastered
Genre is a label attributed in hindsight
The untouched cargo pods are triggering me.
The biggest plus in this game you mentioned, the government system. I'm so glad they went with this rather than generic governments like you saw in Civ 2 or Civ 3. It's easily the best part of this game (that and the terraforming). The game does have its shortcomings. It almost forces you to conquer your neighbors because they just won't stop warring you. It's difficult to play as a peaceful game. You could argue it's truly a 4X game unlike other entries in the Civ series where you didn't really need to do one of the X's.
The AIs are dicks, but if you adopt their preferred social policies, they can be bros too. The AI is generally pretty aggressive, but it's not as bad as Civ 2.
You simply must admit that the inclusion of Civ II's FMV advisors would have improved the experience of Alpha Centauri immeasurably. I wanted to see Human Hive Elvis.
Deidre's council slowly turning into Planetlife/human hybrids along the way would also have been interesting to see, although hers is perhaps the version of the Planet Visions that makes most sense. (It's much funnier to do the hybrid ascension victory as the cybernetic consciousness for how *dissonant* it is)
If the acting and costumes were good. Pretty big if. Although I guess the voice acting is spot on
@@suedeciviii7142
I... disagree your excellency.
I disagree, your excellency.
I'll be honest, this is LITERALLY the only thing I remember about Civ 2, having only played it when I was a child XD
@@Whatsuppbuddies Remember when you beat an opponent? With your opponent hanging in the air spreadeagled before being tortured and the door closing ominously? Gave me the heebie jeebies.
This was my favorite game as a kid. I really miss it. I wish they would remake it with better graphics.
In contention for my favourite game of all time, certainly top 3. Once your eyes get used to it, it is still a deep and very playable game, I love the unit editor and terraforming.
Playable is definitely how I'd describe it. Once you get the hang of it everything is reasonably easy to access. I do think most maps are too big though