Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
Fans of earlier Sid Meier games, such as Civilization and Railroad Tycoon, will love Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, the strategy game where players lead a colony expedition on a new planet. This game employs the same rules and concepts as Civilization, but with a new, slicker interface. Within the game, you can now automate tasks that--in the earlier game--were repetitive and dull. The factions also have a better mix of leaders; three of the seven factions are headed by women. Players begin by assuming leadership of one of seven colony factions, establishing a base on the unexplored world. A balance of priorities is critical: conquering territory, developing technology, and expanding the faction's population are all crucial factors in your survival. If a faction's military output is low, it may be vulnerable to attacks by others or by dangerous mind worms that roam the landscape. On the other hand, building war machines at the expense of scientific research may result in trying to manage a massive but obsolete war machine or a rebellious population. This easy-to-learn and thoroughly absorbing game takes the best features of the original classic and sets them in an exciting new world. --Alyx Dellamonica
Sid Meier presents the next evolution in strategy games. Explore the alien planet that is your new home and uncover its mysteries. Discover over 75 extraordinary technologies. Build over 60 base upgrades. Conquer your enemies with a war machine that you design from over 32,000 possible unit types.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Accessories
 Sid Meiers Civilization IV Beyond the Sword
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Expansion: Alien Crossfire
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri: Prima's Official Strategy Guide
Civilization 3 Complete
Sid Meier's Civilization IV
Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Warlords Expansion Pack
Master of Orion 2: Battle At Antares (Jewel Case)
Sid Meier's Pirates!
Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Gold Edition
Sid Meier's Civilization Chronicles
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Reviews
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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
I will turn this computer off now. 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. 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". 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. 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.
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. And, of course, upon recognizing this, one inevitably thinks "This is it. 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. A true classic, worth the purchase even to play through it only once and hear all the clips. 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. 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. 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.
This, in turn, brings us to the subject of one of the primary virtues of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri - the quotes. 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. The game also features very deep and rewarding gameplay - having owned it for several years, this player still occasionally experiences new discoveries. 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.
Differnt factions such as chairman yang of the hive and more cool stuff. I finaly got burnt out on it and traded it. It had verry good game concpts and I played for hours on end. But I only got 3 stars of fun out of it. And the wierd mind worms which took the place of barbains. It got 4 stars over all. I still remeber playing it. And that was about 7 to 10 years ago.
Planting forest and reaserching biomorphic fugi. And I have nothing but good memories from playing it. But then again I like all civ games. It was one of the most interesting civ games I have ever played. I bought this game at a EB store.
Similar to other Sid Meier strategy games like civilization. On top of that, it is really cheap here on amazon. I have spent way too many hours of my life playing this game. I lost my first copy, so I bought another one, that is how much I like this game. The gameplay is great: turn based strategy. The graphics are great for their time, not bad at all even though its old.
The graphics show a bit of the game's age but are still very acceptable. This is still he best Civilization game even though it is not called that.
The factions are truly different. The units can be designed as you wish, a feature that doesn't exist in any other version of Civ.
Playing with Gaia, for example, requires completely different strategy. The victory conditions are all truly reachable.
I own all Civs and all expansions and while I like Civ IV immensely, this is the most playable. You can create your own "flying laser Bronco" and give it your own name.
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.
Theres none of that nonsense. 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. Just the details like videos and quotes for technology advances. 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.
It is one of the definitive best turn based strategy games ever created. 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. This is a classic game. Its science fiction and even has a storyline which unfolds as the game progresses. Alpha Centauri is a Sid Meier game, although it was designed by Brian Reynolds.
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