Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Let us first dispense with the tedious details that pull this game down from perfection: The AI can be erratic at times, and faction leader personalities are not always followed. It is a surreal experience to hear Lady Deirdre of the Gaians boast that she now has access to Planet Buster missiles, or to try, and fail, to persuade Pravin Lal into a peaceful cessation of hostilities. Planet, while a characterful actor in its own right, can occasionally become tedious, and one wonders why it would feel the need to attack a faction that has, over the cause of the game, produced exactly zero points of ecological damage, and which relies exclusively on hybrid Chiron/Terran forests for resources, using mind worms in numbers far greater than my own. The game also tends to grow repetitive, rewarding only the player on a full-scale war heading or the one walling him- or herself onto an island, there to spend all his or her time researching rare and rewarding technologies and building bigger, better bases. There are also not enough automation options for Former units, thus disallowing a player, such as myself, who solely contructs forests, from automating it, instead forcing us to manually input each and every order. "Move here - remove fungus - flatten terrain - plant forest - build road - construct sensor array/bunker/what have you" is not the ideal way to spend an entertaining afternoon. The game also has an astonishingly punishing learning curve, leading this player to discount the game as boring for a full year before discovering how engrossing it actually is.

Let us then move over onto the positive qualities which Alpha Centauri, does, indeed, possess - the most obvious being the addictive quality inherent in the concept. The game induces that condition colloquially reknowned as "Just One More Turn Syndrome", where, upon giving oneself the eponymous admonishment, one tends to spend the entire evening and night playing instead. And, of course, upon recognizing this, one inevitably thinks "This is it. I will turn this computer off now... just after I finish this one turn" - and discovers that it is now 10 o'clock in the morning, and you have missed classes or work today. The game also features very deep and rewarding gameplay - having owned it for several years, this player still occasionally experiences new discoveries. Faction diplomacy offers more options than you will ever use, and all you will ever desire, if only the other players would accept your offers. Factions are well-designed and realistically portrayed for the most part, ignoring the contrivance of seven markedly distinct and dissimilar philosophies amongst the seven most influential individuals aboard the UNS Unity as being under artistic license. The backstory inbetween the game's release date and Planetfall is incredibly detailed, if difficult to track down, most of the in-game references being mere clues.

This, in turn, brings us to the subject of one of the primary virtues of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri - the quotes. The game is figuratively speaking jam-packed with small blurbs, whether quoted from an actual, historical source, a fictional historical source or one of the faction leaders themselves in one of their numerous books. These are for the most part insightful, often thought-provoking and always appropriate to the technology, base facility or secret project in question, from the silly-sounding but forebodingly double-edged limerick and snippet of nursery rhyme used to introduce the "Cyborg Factory" or the "Dream Twister" Secret Projects, respectively, to the profound and inspiring pieces of rhetoric introducing the "Human Genome Project". However, one of the best aspects of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is the way it takes logical and predictable future technological developments, adds some reasonable extrapolated ones, and puts in just a touch of mysticism - sufficient to spice it up a bit, but insufficient to radically alter the vision of the future. Alpha Centauri's finest side was, and remains, its up-to-date actuality and apartisan exploration of the different aspects of human ideology, ambition and aspiration.

A true classic, worth the purchase even to play through it only once and hear all the clips.

I bought this game at a EB store. It was one of the most interesting civ games I have ever played. It had verry good game concpts and I played for hours on end. And that was about 7 to 10 years ago. I still remeber playing it. But then again I like all civ games. It got 4 stars over all. But I only got 3 stars of fun out of it. I finaly got burnt out on it and traded it. And I have nothing but good memories from playing it. Planting forest and reaserching biomorphic fugi. And the wierd mind worms which took the place of barbains. Differnt factions such as chairman yang of the hive and more cool stuff.

The graphics are great for their time, not bad at all even though its old. The gameplay is great: turn based strategy. I have spent way too many hours of my life playing this game! On top of that, it is really cheap here on amazon. I lost my first copy, so I bought another one, that is how much I like this game. Similar to other Sid Meier strategy games like civilization.

This is still he best Civilization game even though it is not called that. I own all Civs and all expansions and while I like Civ IV immensely, this is the most playable. The factions are truly different. Playing with Gaia, for example, requires completely different strategy. The units can be designed as you wish, a feature that doesn't exist in any other version of Civ. You can create your own "flying laser Bronco" and give it your own name. The victory conditions are all truly reachable. The graphics show a bit of the game's age but are still very acceptable. The production queues are easily manageable and the AI for production control is easily controlled making it the best version to manage large civilizations and not having to worry about little details and focus on the game itself.

This is a classic game. It is one of the definitive best turn based strategy games ever created.

Alpha Centauri is a Sid Meier game, although it was designed by Brian Reynolds. It takes a lot of what Civilization had at the time (like Civ3 or 2 was the last Civ game to come out before this) and added much more depth to the game world. Just the details like videos and quotes for technology advances. You could create your own units, so I had crazy stuff like troop transports that can make orbital insertions, or insanely expensive aircraft which can ignore all base defenses. I even upgraded the supply crawlers to move faster and be better than relying on terraformers to make a base more profitable.

The best thing this has over Civ is that it takes place after Civilization, in the future. So you are actually discovering new units and technologies instead of the same old, same old: start with cavemen, move to the Castle age, Industrial, and finally Modern age. Theres none of that nonsense. Its science fiction and even has a storyline which unfolds as the game progresses.