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[Sowelu]

I dunno.  I think Miriam is the only person who gets MORE sane as the game goes on.  All the other leaders start out living in the present, and eventually go so far into the future in the name of what is necessary that they're barely recognizable as human by the end.  Miriam starts out living in the past, and she stays there compared to the other factions, but by the endgame she's caught up to us-the-players and is the only person left to identify with.

WE MUST DISSENT

[BodyGripper]

*gasp*
My OTHER favorite game!  I used to play the hell out of the 100 turn demo I downloaded.  Then, in some kind of miracle, I found the disc at a yardsale!  (At that time, I was mainly going to yardsales in the hope that I would find an awesome old game.)

Whenever I get hooked on a new game, I think "I wish there was a game that was like a cross between this and Alpha Centauri."  Dwarf Fortress included.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Jesus, it's a real challenge in marathon gaming to play a 512x512 map of this game. I'm about 600 turns in and we've barely expanded enough to get to eachother. This game needs to get updated/rebooted, it's just incredible for how old it is. I've been on a Sid Meier binge lately and can't get enough of it.

[Domenique]

Jesus, it's a real challenge in marathon gaming to play a 512x512 map of this game. I'm about 600 turns in and we've barely expanded enough to get to eachother. This game needs to get updated/rebooted, it's just incredible for how old it is. I've been on a Sid Meier binge lately and can't get enough of it.

Considering that XCOM is getting a reboot, that's viable, but then again, I doubt if AC was really profitable, considering it being a niche in a niche game (4x + sci-fi).

[Bluerobin]

Holy year and a half necro Batman! I kid, though, I like reviving old threads.

I also like civ-style games on freaking huge maps, so a 512x512 SMAC/X game sounds pretty awesome. Can you do a map screenshot of some sort to give me an idea of the scale?

[sambojin]

Love this game. I probably played more of this than Civ 2 back in the day, and still load it from time to time. More than I ever played of Civ4 or even the original Colonization, and I played them a lot as well. It was quirky, a bit hard to get into, but then it was so cool once you'd got used to the research trees, colony building and unit design. And the wonders were so cool. Slightly unbalanced in a few ways (esp the new factions and some wonders), but there was always a foil for most things. Except helicopters, but that was pretty standard for civ games back then. Loved the factions and how far you could change your empire around with different ethics, loved the various styles of victory, loved the extreme feeling of power it gave you at the higher tech levels. Global economic superpower with mega-nukes and alien wave attacks? Can be done. None of the Civ games gave you this feeling of superiority at the end game, but you had to work to get there as well. Which was more rewarding than chariot victories or 2-settler starts every time. Although, pod drops and monoliths could seriously change the game in SMAC (although, so did barbarian villages in Civ).

From memory it was pretty moddable on the factions/techs/etc. Have any decent mods been made for SMAC/SMAX? Either balancing mods or just extra content. I remember fiddling with the factions a fair bit back in the day, which changes things a lot, so surely someone else did something similar?

[Sharp]

GoG selss SMAC, but not SMAX for some strange reason.

Civ II and Alpha Centarui have more similarities then Civ II and Civ III/IV/V mainly because the designer (Brian Reynold's) was the lead designer for Civ II and Alpha Centauri which is why they both feature a lot of 'fluff' (unit/building/wonder descriptions and videos, the amazing personalities in Alpha Centauri) as well as cheat menu's (something Sid hated)

Alpha Centauri could have been called Brian Reynolds Alpha Centauri but Sid Meier is a brand unto himself, I don't want to try and belittle Sid because the man is a legend but it was Brian Reynold's who made Civ II and Alpha Centauri what they are and why they are still so replayable even to this day.

Alpha Centauri isn't a game that needs to be remade, it's a game that just needs to be patched a bit more (especially AI when you have larger maps).

[simoroth]

I keep getting maimed in the early game by being too aggressive or progressing well, whilst the hive or Spartans form a super power on the other side of the world. By the time we cross paths they are unstoppable.

[sambojin]

Who are you playing as? University is handy for their free tech (I think you can get a rover chasis or an armour/weapons upgrade early if it's not blind tech) and Gaians can sometimes get a pretty decent mindworm swarm if they're lucky. Like most civ-style games, early expansion is key. Grab the wonder that gives you size 3 colonies if you can, chuck some cheap police units about and watch the pop boom happen.

Or you could save-scum the hell out of a group of crashed pods, but you may as well just use the cheat menu if you do that.

[simoroth]

Who are you playing as? University is handy for their free tech (I think you can get a rover chasis or an armour/weapons upgrade early if it's not blind tech) and Gaians can sometimes get a pretty decent mindworm swarm if they're lucky. Like most civ-style games, early expansion is key. Grab the wonder that gives you size 3 colonies if you can, chuck some cheap police units about and watch the pop boom happen.

Or you could save-scum the hell out of a group of crashed pods, but you may as well just use the cheat menu if you do that.

Corporation. Sometimes the university.

My best success of late was terraforming my tiny defensive island into a mountain and using nukes to cause enough global warming to drown the rest of the world.

[sambojin]

You'd fit right into a lot of military establishments.

Step #1: Hide in mountains.

Step #2: Nuke shit out of world.

Step #3: Maybe, possibly win as the entire world dies around you.

Sometimes the old methods work the best

Usually with corp or university it's essentially a tech war with overheads. Expand like crazy still, quantity has the right sort of quality, more is better. Then get terraformers to max out cities and rover assault the bejesus out of them. It only takes a bit of water transport to get some good little battlegroups running. As soon as you've got a colony or two of there's (bring your own colonizer as well, set it up as a seaport. As long as it's got food and 1 production it's useful. Just another spot to buy from or fall back to. It takes a while to get going though), buy everything you need on their home turf and start rolling forward. Some mind worms and some artillery units (preferably rover chassis ones) even the odds well against superior forces. 1-2 police units to quell riots and then keep rolling forces in, both from home and on their island(s). It take's a while to get the forces together and is hard to sustain the assault, but that's half the things you have to learn in the game anyway.

I love the tactics of SMAC. Seems so much deeper than almost any civ game, just due to unit versatility and faction options.

If you can't get them with Corporation or University, give Gaians a try. They're the other, other military faction. Worms, monoliths and conventional force rolling ftw.

[Sonlirain]

Well i still think the pirates were the most overpowered non alien faction in the game (x-pac).
They get nearly total imvoulnerability for what's tlike 70 turns because noone has any navy before that.
And even then they can smash any fledgling navy thanks to the ridiculous time advantage (you will abviously have a stronger navy if you start creating it with a 70 turn headstart).

[Catastrophic lolcats]

I love SMAC. It was one of the few games made at the time which managed to tell a story through gameplay mechanics and be extremely satisfying at both. I don't share as much love the expansion which in my opinion had extremely dull and unbalanced factions. The Data Angels and Free Drones would be the closest to decent.

Well i still think the pirates were the most overpowered non alien faction in the game (x-pac).
They get nearly total imvoulnerability for what's tlike 70 turns because noone has any navy before that.
And even then they can smash any fledgling navy thanks to the ridiculous time advantage (you will abviously have a stronger navy if you start creating it with a 70 turn headstart).

They also could easily exploit the whole capturing territory thing as well. I think the fan-patch addressed the issue of the Pirates naval supremacy by slowing due their naval tech (or maybe just general tech) in an attempt to simulate a lack of innovation due to a lack of competition. They still easily had the strength of numbers though.

I'm really saddened nobody has attempted to make a clone of Alpha Centauri, perhaps something even more focused on "political utopias". It's something I would love to see Paradox pick up and develop with some of their interesting grand strategy mechanics. I suppose they'll always be more history focused than futuristic social-science.

[Shadowlord]

It's been a while, but I usually play Lal (UN) and out-Deidre Deidre. She seems backstab-happy, too, for whatever reason. Jealousy?

In my games, the believers and spartans were always the first ones to get wiped out. I usually took out the believers myself just because Godwinson annoyed the heck out of me.

[GlyphGryph]

Zakharov guy here.

So... would anyone be up for a game sometime, maybe?