Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

[phantom000]

I am a big Civilization fan and this is the game that got me hooked all those years ago. I thought about asking Chuck to review it but i had no idea how he would do it because there are not much in the way of cut-scenes or dialogue.

I really like the spin he put on Yang's political victory, it reminds me of what Max said on Bayblon 5: Crusade "Empires rise and fall, worlds live and die but corporations go on and on through good times and bad"

Still i wonder what difficulty Chuck was playing on. At the lower levels the other factions either help you or ignore you, in the middle levels they go their own way and if you align with their agenda they will help you. At the highest levels everyone is out to get you and will actively help each other to stop you, hence Zharkov's calling for a vote to allow Yang to become governor.

P.S. If anyone is interested the game is availible on GoG.com https://www.gog.com/game/sid_meiers_alpha_centauri

[DisgruntleFairy]

The hilarious things is the Crossfire factions are EVEN worse

Hey you like have to slowly weed out Miriam's massive militant infestation... take that and apply WATER scouring every coastline, and then having to develop deep sea tech to deal with underwater bases

I actually really enjoy playing the Pirate faction. There bases take a long time to really get growing steadily but they offer a ton of expansion possibilities.

[J!!]

also, you are literally untouchable in the early game

[Crowley]

I thought I'd mention one game mechanic that didn't come up in the videos: You can restore defeated factions to the game if you conquer the capital of the faction that did the conquering, the reason being that the faction leaders are held there (by the way, that thing they are in is called a Punishment Sphere). Come to think of it, it's pretty damn bizarre that even the humanitarian Pravin Lal will sentence his defeated enemies to a life of constant torture...

[Wargriffin]

To address the thing Chuck alluded too about the Novel and the Game seemingly contracting each other


The Novel paints that the Factions had formed LONG before any of the problems on the unity happened, Morgan and Santaigo were unknown factors, Yang has bond villain mind powers, Garland had no real control of the situation ETC ETC

The Game on the other hand... All of the Faction leaders 'Save Morgan, who isn't hidden away in secret
, are Garland's various officers... Santaigo included, Garland is effectively the only person with the charisma to keep the cult of personalities together... Hence why he has to die

Garland's death and the resulting WHO DUN IT is the event that Breaks the Crew up into the Factions. with planet Fall being effectively a **** this I'm out

[Fixer]

Only Civilization game I've played is II. I still have my CD of it, but it won't install on my new Laptop which really annoys me.

If you have a beefy enough new laptop and some old XP install media and licence you can install a Windows XP virtual machine on it to get the game going.
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

[The Romulan Republic]

I thought I'd mention one game mechanic that didn't come up in the videos: You can restore defeated factions to the game if you conquer the capital of the faction that did the conquering, the reason being that the faction leaders are held there (by the way, that thing they are in is called a Punishment Sphere). Come to think of it, it's pretty damn bizarre that even the humanitarian Pravin Lal will sentence his defeated enemies to a life of constant torture...

Well, I suppose blatant hypocrisy is nothing new.

[phantom000]

I thought I'd mention one game mechanic that didn't come up in the videos: You can restore defeated factions to the game if you conquer the capital of the faction that did the conquering, the reason being that the faction leaders are held there (by the way, that thing they are in is called a Punishment Sphere). Come to think of it, it's pretty damn bizarre that even the humanitarian Pravin Lal will sentence his defeated enemies to a life of constant torture...

Well, I suppose blatant hypocrisy is nothing new.

It comes, in part, from allowing the players freedom of choice and action. Morgan, for example, cannot adopted planned economics but he can use 'green' economics and become good friends with the Gaians. Even Yang can be played as either middle of the road socialist or the ultimate orwellian Big Brother.

I always thought of Lal as a pacifist who found wisdom in that old phrase si vic pacem parabellum.

[Wargriffin]

Lal's kinda in a bad place...

Gameplay Wise he only has one real 'advantage' He gets Double Votes in Council meeting meaning with a Healthy population he can dominate the voting

and he's only limitation is he can't use police states....


other then that he's pretty much whatever you want to make out of him... Morgan has better diplomatic options and his sheer economic power , Miriam has better morale and a harder to turn to Nigh impossible to turn populace, Santaigo and Yang apparently took all the troops with them, Yang of course can get away with bullying his populace, Skye has the power of Nature after a few turns and The Professor has SCIENCE!

.The other major problem is apparently NO ONE RESPECTS Lal as seeing him as either Garland's poorly inadequate successor or that Wimp thats hiding behind a piece of paper that don't mean much of nothing.


You play Lal when you want to prove you can beat the other 6 with your skills as a player instead of exploit a factions unique strengths

[Rothide]

I made an account just to comment on this review.

The one thing I loved about the game is that a lot of stuff on the surface look pretty normal for sci-fi, but dig a bit, you get some dark ideas brought about.

Hell one of the first techs you get is Recycling Vats, and you don't just recycle the normal stuff, organic components are needed as well. As yang says ing the quote "At the end of your life, you are required to go into the Vats and give back to the people." so yeah, soilent green is people, also fuel is people, and the adhesive is people, and it's all advertised as such. But it also makes sense, you are going down to Planet, and you need to have rations and support an economy. Farms can provide some food, but for the basic materials needed to further construction, production, etc. Base resources are needed in any way possible. They can't afford to let resources literally go to rot.

And as the game progresses it just keeps getting darker. hell my favorite secret project is The Singularity Inductor (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB46XpnwhrA). In Civ the grand projects inspired you, made you feel like you've accomplished something. With this game, some of them just feel like "Just what the hell did I just unleash here".