Alpha Centauri had the advantages of dedicated developers with extensive experience in this particular game type, and sufficient resources to do everything they wanted to do at a high quality. It's rare that a game has that going for it. It's sort of why Crusader Kings 2 is among the best that Paradox offers.
It's also strange how they focus more on developing the graphics of games instead of developing on the mechanics - like sure I can get focusing on graphics for a first person game, but for a turn based 4X or a GSG it's an odd move. CivBE removing terraforming and stacking, CK3 being worse than CK2 but adding a graphical depiction of the court, vic3 having better fish graphics but hoi4 economics... A lot of times the graphical additions take me out of my immersion SWIFTLY
Those are incredible and I had no idea there were econ strategies other than getting as many bases as possible and going from normal improvements to forests to fungus forests.
Curious that you don't seem to have experimented with water much. I seem to recall kelp + tidals being very strong if you could get the minerals from somewhere.
Captain Sven might actually be overpowered as hell because of his voodoo powers over deep ocean sprawling & mineral acquisition. But for the most part I find water a bit strange to work with for the other factions. You get more food and money than god but terraforming ocean tiles is expensive. For defensive reasons I also like to stay away from the water, and if I build any bases in the water then they're usually just cheap bases to "zone away" neutrals/allies from claiming my coastline. It does make sense to abuse the coast if you have few bases but if you are spamming a horrifying amount of bases you start racking up horrendous inefficiency penalties which render the energy advantages of coastal bases moot
*EDIT
I would also say ocean sprawl is not as optimal as creating land sprawl, just because of the lack of minerals and how it's locked behind doctrine tech and really needs fusion reactors to cut down the cost of colony pods/sea formers. Generally with big ocean worlds I would say it benefits a more pacifistic wealth-building style where you spam the ocean with tidal collectors that feed into one base using sea supply crawlers. If you're going for an "optimal" continent-devouring metropolis the sea presents a big obstacle to growth and is also a significant obstacle to playing one of the offensive conquerors like Miriam or Yang. Especially since the AI always knows where your transport ships are ;-;
A disgusting exception might be Miriam with the planetary transport network, which starts off colonies at base size 3. Even better if you have the maritime secret project for that extra 2 sea movement, but it's not necessary.
1. Build sea colony from base A. Use sea colony pod to build base B.
2. Use starting 10 minerals from base B and rush build a new sea colony pod. Wait until next turn.
3. Because sea colony pods move far faster at sea than pods on land, you can immediately use that sea colony pod to build another sea base 3-4 tiles away from the first one, and rush build a new sea colony pod from that one whilst you begin building police units for base B.
4. Exponential sea-colonisation until the entire ocean is yours.
Technically anyone can do this strat but it suits Miriam who can use democracy without losing the 10 minerals starting bonus, for that extra efficiency & pop growth. Each sea base starts off with recycling tanks equivalent so even in deep ocean and no terraforming each base is worth a little bit and magnified over so many bases, it can get very silly
Also: Reminder that you can place your own landmark names using SHIFT N. Use this knowledge to your amusement. CTRL SHIFT N to delete a landmark