Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

aka: Alpha Centauri, SMAC
Moby ID: 4
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

After the 20th century, humankind reaches its hand out across the stars. Seeking to escape the overcrowded chaos of Earth, the United Nations builds a single seedship, the UNS Unity, and sends her on a mission towards the Alpha Centauri star system. After a long journey in cryogenic suspension, the Unity reaches Alpha Centauri where the Captain is killed under mysterious circumstances. Suspecting the motives of one another, the officers and the crew split into 7 factions, each lead with a distinct ideology and motives that they seek to build the planet in their image...

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is best compared to Civilization II, but features many distinct differences in gameplay and thinking. In Civilization, the objective was to evolve a society from primitive tribes, whereas Alpha Centauri starts with the landing of colony pods on a barren planet with society becoming fractured. Each faction (aka nation) receives it's own share of the Unity's resources and tech base. For the basics, bases produce nutrients, materials and energy. Nutrients are required to feed to population, Materials are used in production and energy represents the commerce effect which can be traded to players diplomatically or spent on improvements. The 7 factions each have their own agenda, which is determined in large part by the Social Engineering. This enables a faction to customize its values, earning a bonus for what it considers important and a penalty for what it doesn't. Social Engineering system are discovered through research, the same as other improvements, such as structures and units.

Research is divided into 4 types of technologies, which form an intertwining tree of dependencies. They are: Conquer (direct military applications), Explore (indirect technologies for units and bases), Build (direct infrastructure application) and Discovery (Science for the sake of science, indirect applications). Because of the separation, factions can focus on what they hope the intended result of their science will be, and can be changed at any time. To explore the planet, units are needed. Any unit can be customized out of known technologies; consisting of a chassis type, reactor, weapon, armor and special abilities. Each of these components has a different expense, with untested technologies having additional overhead (prototype).

Finally, Alpha Centauri is not a desolate star system. There is life on the planet, in the form of alien fungus that litters the ground and strange creatures such as mindworms. Initially hostile to all factions, this form of life holds its own secrets and effects on the world at large.

Spellings

  • 半人马座 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

148 People (145 developers, 3 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 88% (based on 39 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 172 ratings with 16 reviews)

One of the most immersive TBSs around.

The Good
The most important thing for a game is that it should be enjoyable to play, and SMAC manages this perfectly. Completing that monolithic project that took 100 turns to complete feels satisfying, as does negotiating with the other seven factions... or crushing them. The brilliant thing about SMAC is that - unlike most other games - you can tailor any unit to suit your needs and coffers. This game has every charm of the Civilisation games, only executed with much more effort.

The Bad
This is not a game for those who have not played TBSs (Turn Based Strategies) before. The interface at first looks daunting, so sitting through the five-minute guide to the various screen is recommended. After this, though, it's a breeze. The graphics are acceptable, but by todays standards they are not brilliant, but then, that's not what TBSs are about. The music can get repetetive after a while, but this is only a minor problem.

The Bottom Line
If you're a diehard TBS fan looking for something new and challenging to try, this is the game for you. Sid Meier has cracked his brilliant formula again, and this results in one of the best TBSs around. Enjoy, and don't hang around in Xenofungus for long...

Windows · by Una Manzana (5) · 2005

Not very innovative-but still worth playing

The Good
It is a game in Civilization-style. The diplomacy is better than in most other games, especially the council is a great idea. The automatic governeurs help a lot in the later game.

The Bad
Well... everything I expected it to have. The changes since Civilization are not big enough. Most of the "new" features are already known from other games (e.g. the unit designer from Master of Orion). Why aren't there treaties between more than two factions? Many alliances do not work because they are in contrast to another treaty. There could have been done more with the council. The AI's behaviour towards the player because of different or similar ideologies are only hinted at.

The Bottom Line
It seems like Sid Meier's and Brian Reynolds' creative days are over. Their last innovative game was Civilization. Since then they only repeat themselves. Alpha Centauri is the latest evidence for that. Sure, it is a great game, playing it is fun, but I am not as enthusiastic about it as I was about Pirates or Civilization.

Windows · by Mr Creosote (366) · 1999

Civ in space, but uglier. A good game, but still...

The Good
"Alpha Centauri" is pretty much Civilization On Another Planet, and has most of the associated strengths; solid, deep gameplay, addictive and immersive atmosphere, and a great balance between combat, research and construction elements. AC also has a backstory that's actually not bad as computer games go, and unlike Civ it has fairly extensive "Race" modifiers to give each civilization a different approach..

The Bad
I'm utterly baffled as to how this game as a higher rating than Civ, since it's basically the same game except with some weaknesses:

  1. My God, this game is ugly, one of the ugliest successful games ever written for the PC. The color palette is just awful; units all look the same and are about as attractive as Joan Rivers's latest facelift.

  2. The technology tree is cryptic at best and confusing at worst.

  3. There's just not much here that didn't already exist. The game is graphically no better than the six-years-older Civ II, and it doesn't really add anything gamewise, so why not save a few bucks and play Civ?

  4. The unit design system is the pits. There's really no unit design in the game at all; when you get more technology your units' attack and defense numbers improve.

    The Bottom Line
    More Civilization! Worth having if you can get it for a decent price, but don't expect anything better than Civ.

Windows · by Rick Jones (96) · 2001

[ View all 16 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Upgrading units manually? Xoleras (66143) Aug 2, 2007

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Cutscenes

Most of the secret project movies contain scenes from the documentary Baraka.You can find information about Baraka at IMDB.

Development

From an interview with designer Brian Reynolds Brian Reynolds with Computer Games Magazine (June 2000):

I always wondered if my degree in Philosophy would ever come in handy for something. My favorite part of this game was developing the characters and factions, and the AI to give them divergent personalities and agendas.

I think a part of broad appeal is merely choosing the right topic, and certainly compared to Civilization II, science-fiction was a lot harder, and gave the game more of an esoteric feel. Everybody knows what the wheel is, everyone knows what mathematics is, but linear mathematics? Particle accelerators?...It's even worse when you get into things you kind of made up.

Plasma bomb

The "planet buster" of the first-generation model, is listed in the game manual as technically called the Mark 714 plasma bomb, a single warhead delivered by a ballistic missile that locks onto its target by the signature of charged particles coming from it. The active kill radius, or the radius in which everything and everyone would be immediately destroyed (as opposed to people killed eventually by the side effects) is listed as 2,000 kilometers -- about 1,240 miles. The yield of the first-generation "planet buster" is said to be equivalent to 296 gigatons of TNT.

Here is what would happen if a bomb one ten-thousandth as powerful as that were detonated in a groundburst upon New York City:

There would be an overpressure of 15 pounds per square inch out to about five miles, or as far as the Receiving Reservoir at Central Park, Manhattan, and even reinforced concrete structures such as skyscrapers would be obliterated. Most water would be vaporized. No one would survive there. The surface of the land in that area would be melted to resemble black glass.

Smaller concrete structures would be destroyed as far as about six miles away.

In a doughnut shape covering the area between seven and nine miles away, all houses and other small buildings would be destroyed. Towards the outside, wreckage would remain.

Windows would be shattered as far out as about sixty miles away, from Scarsdale in the north to Keansburg in the south.

The above information about blast radii is from the HYDESim High Yield Detonation Effects Simulato.

Premise

As people who play Civilization know, at the end, one of the ways to win the game is get the expedition to Alpha Centauri first. So it was no coincidence that Sid's next game is Alpha Centauri.

Reception

As of August 2000, Alpha Centauri was PC Gamer's highest rated game ever with a score of 98%. Prior to the review this honor belonged to Sid Meier's Civilization II which had a score of 97%. In the December 2004 issue of PC Gamer, Alpha Centauri's "highest-rated" title was lowered to a mere tie when Half-Life 2 received a 98%.

Awards

  • Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences
    • 1999 - Strategy Game of the Year
  • Denver Post
    • 1999 - Best Game of the Year
  • Gamespot
    • 1999 - Turn-based Game of the Year
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #44 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
  • Origin Awards
    • 1999 - Best Computer Strategy Game
  • PC Gamer
    • 1999 - Turn-based Game of the Year,
    • April 2000 - #16 in the "All-Time Top 50 Games Poll"
  • Toronto Sun
    • 1999 - Best Game of the Year

Information also contributed by 88 49, Chris Martin, Indra was here, Kasey Chang, mulayim; PCGamer77 and Zack Green

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Related Sites +

  • Alpha Centauri 2
    single-player and multiplayer resources: game guides, game of the month, modding resources, MP ladder, all patches (official and unofficial), mirror of the AC official site (no longer online), downloads, articles, fan-fiction, fan art, links.
  • aliencrossfire.civ3.de
    German fansite for Alpha Centauri and its add-on; it offers background story, tips & tricks, scenarios, etc.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 4
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Brian Hirt.

Macintosh added by Corn Popper.

Additional contributors: PCGamer77, Kalirion, Rebound Boy, Technocrat, Shoddyan, CaesarZX, Patrick Bregger, sisko, FatherJack.

Game added March 1, 1999. Last modified March 19, 2024.