Ah ... dear SMAC. My girlfriend at the time was Lady Deirdre Skye's actual real life double, there or thereabouts. Every game I played it was with Deirdre, being youngish and in love and all the rest of it. Come the break-up, some while later, poor old Deirdre got hounded around the planet, her and her ugly worms (not real life tapeworms or anything, you understand) and I never played her again. Thanks for this belated trip down memory (64kb) lane.
I loved the free reign they gave you to even go in the files and change dialogue and everything! This is the kinda game that cab be played over and over..
Yes! :) I consider SMAC the best LAN TBS and second best TBS overall after Orion 2 But I play more SMAC because simultaneous turns are a better multiplayer option than hotseat!
Thanks for this amazing Let's play! SMAC is my favourite game of all time and I really enjoyed how relaxing it was to see. Also, I like that you explained the different parts of the game without overwhelming the viewer with details. Excellent work! I look forward to seeing the rest of this campaign.
Played a ton of AC and got Crossfire, but did not play it. Still have Chris Hartpence's guide . I bought it after I stopped playing. Nerve Staple, loved that name.
vmxaesa Not overly familiar with Alien Crossfire myself. Actually, my experience with this game overall is quite limited. I'm soooo looking forward to playing through this! :)
If you get this game on GOG it will not automatically run alien crossfire. If you want to play alien crossfire, click the "more" button next to "play", then hover your mouse over other, then click Alien Crossfire.
Have you ever tried "Planetfall" mod for Civilization 4? It's quite different from AC but it captures the feel amazingly and translates the game into new Civ4 mechanics very well.
Deon Urist Yes, I played that a few years back. I wouldn't mind trying it again as, from what I understand, you can plug in some of the media content from the original Alpha Centauri (which I didn't have at the time). Sigh, if only I could download more hours into my day! :D
It's interesting, my main monitor's native resolution is 2560x1600, so 720p videos actually scale to full screen better than 1080p videos do. Not that I complain about the option, choices are always good. Anyhow, I have this somewhere, maybe it's time to dig it back out.
Larry Monte I was happy to find an actual hard copy and it's part of my proud collection of games, amongst them The original Warcraft, Populous, Settlers II
Larry Monte After watching you play both this and the new Civ, I realized why I stopped playing this kind of games: it's the repetition in city managements. Most, if not all, of the cities follow the same path, but I have to manually build all those buildings anyway. Moo2 was the worst, with some 50 buildings to be build on each planet. I wish they have a template (as in Stars!) where you can just let most cities/planets follow your default path, and only micromanage the important ones. That's what I like about Distant Worlds. I don't have to build mundane buildings like factories because they are abstracted out. So, in the end, I'm resigned to watching other people play Civ type games. It's much more entertaining and less stressful for me that way :) Also, it forces me to do this in 30-minutes chunks rather than the typical all-night affairs :)
Long Doan Agreed. They all do follow the same similar path. I got away from most of these types of games for quite a while and indulged in a 2.5 year stint where I hardly played anything else except Distant Worlds (as you can tell from my channel :D). I'm enjoying my return to them - especially playing them for my channel. But yeah, that "One More Turn" thing can get out of hand! :D
I'd like to do a LP of SMAX but curious as to what you use to record? I was thinking maybe FRAPS/Audacity but I tried DxTory and that just prevents SMAX from loading. Thanks.
As someone who was dissapointed with beyond earth, thanks for making this! No strategy game is as good at capturing atmosphere and character writing as this. Alien crossfire, not so much. Also, when you're on a techs screen, you can see a third person comment of what exactly the technology is by clicking on the little clipboard next to the '' clipboard
lifehole1 Beyond Earth isn't too bad - although it definitely leaves room for expansion. It seems to be somewhat light in depth in a few areas, I'm finding so far. I've still only experienced early game to this point, however. Agreed on the atmosphere and characters of Alpha Centauri. I wish I could run the atmospheric background music but I'm not taking the chance with UA-cam's Content ID crap. Already got nabbed on the main menu stuff. I've seen what you mean about Alien Crossfire - I hate the Pirate Faction (the reason they aren't in this game) as they seem to just to expand way too fast I found... Thanks for the tip on the clipboard thingie... I'll check that out next time I record. :)
I pretty much agree. It needs much more depth to be fun to me. Reminds me of civ 5 vanilla. Plus it isn't really the 'alpha centauri sequel' everyone wanted and more of a civ 5 spin-off than anything else. It feels like a standalone expansion to civ 5, tbh.
Fair warning though, don't go overboard with mapsizes, it crushes your performance mid game. I did 2 months over 1 game. Was super fun. The mod is still in development. So they are dedicated to say the least.
Dennisz89 I recently discovered that Civ IV (unmodded) is a massive resource pig on my machine... I never realized that before. 87% usage with the game sitting idle. Civ V isn't even that high... I doubt we'll see Civ IV on my channel any time soon... :(
Hey Larry really nice start ! I was thinking of starting playing a game of this myself but I was a bit afraid it wouldn't function correctly on a recent computer. Also, what difficulty setting are you playing on ?
TheWaterplouf The GOG version works great on Windows 7. Difficulty? Hmmm... I was so ticked with UA-cam's copyright crap on the last setup that I just flew through the menus on the last run. I _Think_ I'm on Talent (third from easiest) but might have possibly picked 2nd easiest (whatever that's called). I sort of flipped through the two difficulties on my various setups that I'm now not 100% sure. I'll have a look in-game and see if there is anywhere that tells us that. Again, pretty sure it's Talent... :)
***** Larry Monte Thanks for your answers, I bought the game and I am enjoying it quite a lot :). I wasn't sure about the GoG version because I had trouble in the past with their dungeon keepers 2 version, but AC works like a charm.
If you want to use your powers for good get someone to release a gfx improvement for this game. Also Pandora is the spiritual successor to SMAC..CivBE is just a 2K compycat money grab facade.
J B I really haven't looked for mods to this game - perhaps someone has already done some gfx work if it's at all possible to do. The whole BE/SMAC/Pandora triangle is interesting. Personally, I see more similarities between BE and Pandora than anything from either to do with SMAC. Maybe that's just me? :/
Next time you play I suggest you play on fourth from easiest/one(two?) below talent. If you want more balance I HEAVILY suggest removing aliens and maybe even all cross fire factions. They're balanced terribly. (they also have shittier writing/techs, imo.) Mostly though, aliens will be ridiculous. Aliens are so overpowered its insane. You SHOULD be able to beat them since you're a more powerful faction than the original 6 plus you're just playing on talent. It'll be interesting, I hope. I predict the aliens will quickly overrun all the other factions.
lifehole1 I'll look at this next time I play. I think I got lucky this time out as there isn't a huge amount of fungus around me (at least at the start). Sounds like it might be interesting later on though... :)
@lifehole1 I disagree what you call unbalanced I call part of the charm of this classic each faction has it own personality and Quirks bit of a challenge there you might say... I don't think the aliens will be all that much a challenge unless he happens to be in between the two of them in that case we get to see how good a diplomat Larry really is.. LOL
Larry Monte Not really. if you put 7 of any ai faction and 2 alien factions the aliens will steamroll them 8-9 times out of ten. The factions do have their own challenges and quirks but the aliens (and to a certain extent, crossfire factions) are undoubtedly much more powerful. Most expert SMAC/x players don't allow alien factions in multiplayer.
Ah ... dear SMAC. My girlfriend at the time was Lady Deirdre Skye's actual real life double, there or thereabouts. Every game I played it was with Deirdre, being youngish and in love and all the rest of it. Come the break-up, some while later, poor old Deirdre got hounded around the planet, her and her ugly worms (not real life tapeworms or anything, you understand) and I never played her again. Thanks for this belated trip down memory (64kb) lane.
I loved the free reign they gave you to even go in the files and change dialogue and everything! This is the kinda game that cab be played over and over..
haha it is funny, i still play this game
One of the best games ever.
***** Agreed! :)
Yes! :)
I consider SMAC the best LAN TBS
and second best TBS overall after Orion 2
But I play more SMAC because simultaneous turns are a better multiplayer option than hotseat!
Nice let's play. All the other alpha centauri ones I come across skip through the tech flavor text and stuff, this one is real laid back. Thanks!
I've never been a huge fan of Sid Meier, but this looks really cool! I could definitely get into this series.
Looking forward to this series, Larry. Nice alternative to the tsunsmi of Beyond Earth LPs.
RorqualMaru I might actually be doing both... at least that's what I'm thinking about... Might be kind of cool to do them in tandem. :)
Thanks for this amazing Let's play! SMAC is my favourite game of all time and I really enjoyed how relaxing it was to see. Also, I like that you explained the different parts of the game without overwhelming the viewer with details. Excellent work! I look forward to seeing the rest of this campaign.
My favorite Sid Meier game!
Good to have you back Larry - I been missing your videos. I will definitely tune in for the AC series too!
Andrew Adams Thanks for that! :) Hope you enjoy...
One of my favorite games, I'm always happy to see some LPs of it :D
Aether911 Looking forward to it myself. Glad to have you along! :)
Larry Monte Thank you for this. Alpha Centauri was the first turn based strategy I played. Very interesting game.
Mike Jones Thanks for joining us! I was so happy when I found this on GOG. I thought it was going to fade away in history...
Played a ton of AC and got Crossfire, but did not play it. Still have Chris Hartpence's guide . I bought it after I stopped playing. Nerve Staple, loved that name.
vmxaesa Not overly familiar with Alien Crossfire myself. Actually, my experience with this game overall is quite limited. I'm soooo looking forward to playing through this! :)
Enjoying this series
oh yeah 1080p!
Heh, still watch a vid... cool stuff, 😉
If you get this game on GOG it will not automatically run alien crossfire. If you want to play alien crossfire, click the "more" button next to "play", then hover your mouse over other, then click Alien Crossfire.
Have you ever tried "Planetfall" mod for Civilization 4? It's quite different from AC but it captures the feel amazingly and translates the game into new Civ4 mechanics very well.
Deon Urist Yes, I played that a few years back. I wouldn't mind trying it again as, from what I understand, you can plug in some of the media content from the original Alpha Centauri (which I didn't have at the time).
Sigh, if only I could download more hours into my day! :D
Keep up the great work man!
It's called monoLITH, not monument...
also disbanding units inbase gives back some construction mins
I know... but sometimes it flies out of my mouth wrong. Get used to it... likely happens a lot in this series. :D
it does... maybe it's a minor thing, but it feels like nails on a chalkboard to me :D
nice video series tho, thanks for providing
It's interesting, my main monitor's native resolution is 2560x1600, so 720p videos actually scale to full screen better than 1080p videos do. Not that I complain about the option, choices are always good.
Anyhow, I have this somewhere, maybe it's time to dig it back out.
Long Doan It'll be worth the dig! I've been wanting to get into a game of this since I grabbed it a couple months ago. :)
Larry Monte I was happy to find an actual hard copy and it's part of my proud collection of games, amongst them The original Warcraft, Populous, Settlers II
Voron Agrrav Nice! A collector's item for sure! :)
Larry Monte After watching you play both this and the new Civ, I realized why I stopped playing this kind of games: it's the repetition in city managements. Most, if not all, of the cities follow the same path, but I have to manually build all those buildings anyway. Moo2 was the worst, with some 50 buildings to be build on each planet. I wish they have a template (as in Stars!) where you can just let most cities/planets follow your default path, and only micromanage the important ones. That's what I like about Distant Worlds. I don't have to build mundane buildings like factories because they are abstracted out.
So, in the end, I'm resigned to watching other people play Civ type games. It's much more entertaining and less stressful for me that way :) Also, it forces me to do this in 30-minutes chunks rather than the typical all-night affairs :)
Long Doan Agreed. They all do follow the same similar path. I got away from most of these types of games for quite a while and indulged in a 2.5 year stint where I hardly played anything else except Distant Worlds (as you can tell from my channel :D). I'm enjoying my return to them - especially playing them for my channel.
But yeah, that "One More Turn" thing can get out of hand! :D
I'd like to do a LP of SMAX but curious as to what you use to record? I was thinking maybe FRAPS/Audacity but I tried DxTory and that just prevents SMAX from loading. Thanks.
As someone who was dissapointed with beyond earth, thanks for making this!
No strategy game is as good at capturing atmosphere and character writing as this.
Alien crossfire, not so much.
Also, when you're on a techs screen, you can see a third person comment of what exactly the technology is by clicking on the little clipboard next to the '' clipboard
lifehole1 Beyond Earth isn't too bad - although it definitely leaves room for expansion. It seems to be somewhat light in depth in a few areas, I'm finding so far. I've still only experienced early game to this point, however.
Agreed on the atmosphere and characters of Alpha Centauri. I wish I could run the atmospheric background music but I'm not taking the chance with UA-cam's Content ID crap. Already got nabbed on the main menu stuff.
I've seen what you mean about Alien Crossfire - I hate the Pirate Faction (the reason they aren't in this game) as they seem to just to expand way too fast I found...
Thanks for the tip on the clipboard thingie... I'll check that out next time I record. :)
I pretty much agree. It needs much more depth to be fun to me. Reminds me of civ 5 vanilla. Plus it isn't really the 'alpha centauri sequel' everyone wanted and more of a civ 5 spin-off than anything else. It feels like a standalone expansion to civ 5, tbh.
lifehole1 Yup, and that's all I was really expecting from BE. So in that regard I wasn't really disappointed. :D
Nice! You heard about the Caveman2Cosmos mod for Civ4? I had hundreds of hours gameplay in that!
Dennisz89 I have and it looks very good. Although I haven't actually tried it yet. Thanks. :)
Larry Monte took me three weeks to win caveman2cosmos :D
really long mod
ozis ponas OMG! Don't tellme that! I love EPIC games! LOL!
Fair warning though, don't go overboard with mapsizes, it crushes your performance mid game. I did 2 months over 1 game. Was super fun. The mod is still in development. So they are dedicated to say the least.
Dennisz89 I recently discovered that Civ IV (unmodded) is a massive resource pig on my machine... I never realized that before. 87% usage with the game sitting idle. Civ V isn't even that high... I doubt we'll see Civ IV on my channel any time soon... :(
Hey Larry really nice start ! I was thinking of starting playing a game of this myself but I was a bit afraid it wouldn't function correctly on a recent computer. Also, what difficulty setting are you playing on ?
GoG has some modern fixes for modern computers.
TheWaterplouf The GOG version works great on Windows 7. Difficulty? Hmmm... I was so ticked with UA-cam's copyright crap on the last setup that I just flew through the menus on the last run. I _Think_ I'm on Talent (third from easiest) but might have possibly picked 2nd easiest (whatever that's called). I sort of flipped through the two difficulties on my various setups that I'm now not 100% sure. I'll have a look in-game and see if there is anywhere that tells us that. Again, pretty sure it's Talent... :)
***** Larry Monte Thanks for your answers, I bought the game and I am enjoying it quite a lot :). I wasn't sure about the GoG version because I had trouble in the past with their dungeon keepers 2 version, but AC works like a charm.
TheWaterplouf Enjoy! The best $6 you'll spend for a long time! :D
If you want to use your powers for good get someone to release a gfx improvement for this game. Also Pandora is the spiritual successor to SMAC..CivBE is just a 2K compycat money grab facade.
J B I really haven't looked for mods to this game - perhaps someone has already done some gfx work if it's at all possible to do.
The whole BE/SMAC/Pandora triangle is interesting. Personally, I see more similarities between BE and Pandora than anything from either to do with SMAC. Maybe that's just me? :/
ok play this instead =)
Jonny Söderlund I'll play both! Why not? :D
True =)
OMG! You poor soul. You never got the NO-CD patch? I'm so sorry.
Next time you play I suggest you play on fourth from easiest/one(two?) below talent.
If you want more balance I HEAVILY suggest removing aliens and maybe even all cross fire factions. They're balanced terribly. (they also have shittier writing/techs, imo.)
Mostly though, aliens will be ridiculous. Aliens are so overpowered its insane. You SHOULD be able to beat them since you're a more powerful faction than the original 6 plus you're just playing on talent. It'll be interesting, I hope. I predict the aliens will quickly overrun all the other factions.
lifehole1 I'll look at this next time I play. I think I got lucky this time out as there isn't a huge amount of fungus around me (at least at the start). Sounds like it might be interesting later on though... :)
@lifehole1 I disagree what you call unbalanced I call part of the charm of this classic each faction has it own personality and Quirks bit of a challenge there you might say... I don't think the aliens will be all that much a challenge unless he happens to be in between the two of them in that case we get to see how good a diplomat Larry really is.. LOL
Beakie1958 Yes, "unbalanced" does indeed work for some games - Distant Worlds is a prime example. Perhaps Alien Crossfire is another?
Larry Monte Not really. if you put 7 of any ai faction and 2 alien factions the aliens will steamroll them 8-9 times out of ten. The factions do have their own challenges and quirks but the aliens (and to a certain extent, crossfire factions) are undoubtedly much more powerful. Most expert SMAC/x players don't allow alien factions in multiplayer.
lifehole1 Hmmm... maybe I should have played one of the Alien factions then. :D
NOOOOOoooooo the horrible worms!!!
Caspar Minning Mindworm BOILS
Larry Monte
Just wait until you learn to domesticate them.
***** Ok, so what do you feed a pet Mindworm? Hehehe
Larry Monte
Brains?