Alpha Centauri (Jewel Case)

Discount Price: $12.69

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PC Gamer (1-year)	Games for Windows: The Official Magazine

Customer Reviews:

The rumors are true [Posted on 2002-09-18]
I had heard from a number of people beforehand that SMAC was better than Civilization. I now believe that.

What is better is difficult to sum up, but the easiest thing to put a finger on is the variety of improvements that can be made to cities, terrain, and even troops. In Civ you had the occasional chance to update your troops to one standard breed of soldier. Now, along with the ability to create troops and vehicles from the ground up, a person can pick and choose what sort of force they want to create, down to even fairly small details.

Another thing I feel is an improvement is the research system. What is researched is not a simple selection of a technology, the existance of which the player and his civ should not even know about to begin with. Instead, players select what sort of advance they want, such as military or construction technologies, and let things go from there. This helps to some degree keep things interesting, as there are no absolute garantees that you get what you wanted.

The planetary UN-type convention is another interesting feature. This should probably have been included in Civ 3, as well, as it gives a very good way to see how an individual is fairing in international relations, and also opens a door to new diplomatic ties not possible with simple one-on-one talks.

Many enjoy the story line given in the game, but this is something the game did not absolutely need. That is, through the discovery of technologies and information about the world, the story could have unfolded on its own. Instead, a person is yanked from play in order to read a story line supposedly centered on the player's character. If they were going to go this far, it would have been nice to have more personalized stories and endings for each player, rather than having in the end everyone with the same fate in store.

All in all, I can find no real problems with the game. It went beyond my expectations, and made it just that more difficult for me to be impressed by even Sid Meyer's other work.

The original sequel to Civilization 2 [Posted on 2002-11-08]
If you ever played Civil 2 you might have built a huge empire and launched your spaceship to colonize Alpha Centauri... but what happened next???
This game is the sequel of the award winning game Civilization 2 and starts where the other ended.
The spacechip desintegrates before the arrival in Alpha C. and the colonists are disgregated all over the planet.
You can choose any of the surviving group of colonists to found your base and start building your new civilization.
Each of the groups or "tribes" has their own peculiarities: warrior, scientific, diplomatic, etc...

The game is pretty much the same as Civilization 2 regarding building cities and colonizing the world but brings some features within that will later be available in Civilization 3 such as diplomatic victory for instance. Plus the possibility of customizing your units.

I really recommend it and assure hours of fun and joy.

I don't think this is as good as some others say [Posted on 2002-11-24]
I played all the other Civ like games and this is the type of game I like, but I just didn't get Alpha Centauri. I played this one enought to get good, but the whole feel was just too much like Civ II and I seemed to get into Civ II like end games too easily.
Having now played CivIII for six months I given it a 5 start rating I don't understand my own review, but that was the feel I had.
I guess if you can get it for $10 now then it should be worth a try.
Maybe I'll try this again another day.

If only days and nights were longer.. [Posted on 2003-01-22]
so I could play this masterpiece more often! When I ended my long and profound relationship with civ2, having attained one
of the first monster scores on the net, I thought that nothing would ever come close to the feeling I got out of diving deep
into the perplexity of Sid Mayer's classic.
I bought AC out of curiosity. I first went through the manual. Magic! I then started studying the game. More magic!
The offspring of the Mayer-Reynolds collaboration was nothing short of miraculous. The game had all the stengths of civ2 and none of its weaknesses! Micromanagement was introduced abolishing the tedious bits of civ. Customizing land,sea&air units was an absolute killer. The sound was smooth as silk.The overall display was devine.
And then it was the concept... That game's concept could easily stand alone as a great read in the sci-fi bookmarket.
Making some very simple changes in the text files such as city names, gender, quotes etc. the player can personalize a faction and actually become part of the story; and what a beautiful story it is. The living planet, the fantastic future science tree along with its mind-twisting excerpts from the "datalinks", a word that inevidably sends one back,momentarily, to the haunting intro movie, the combination of socio-political models producing incredibly unusual types of goverment, the eery peace emanating from the alien atmosphere... No matter how violent your strategy may be, the nature of the game is such that it will eventually force you to think more, kill less and try harder.
All of the above and much more will be experienced to their full extent ONLY by those who will invest time and effort in getting to know all the subtleties of this hard-to-master gem and not by those who think that they know the game because,after a few reloads, they finally managed to win at deity level.
Finishing this well deserved encomium I would like to point out the only flaw I found in AC. That is the use of a single
wav. file for all hand-held/turret mounted weapons regardless of class, power and age. Big no-no. The amount of research and attention to detail that ,evidently, the designers put into this game just goes to prove that this one just slipped under their noses.
Ah well, nothing's perfect after all...

The zenith of strategy gaming. kudos to Reynolds. [Posted on 2005-06-01]
This game is the only turn-based strategy game one would ever need.
It has everything one would want out of a strategy game and SO much more.
The story is epic. The world is fully realised. The gameplay is deep. The literary references(not only Sci-Fi but philosophical and ethical and social) are many and profound. The factions are compelling. The possibilities are endless.

The including of multiplayer only sweetens the deal.

The only (minor) flaws here, which only present themselves to the diehard gamer, is the apparent lack of challenge from the AI, as well as the seemingly lacklustre graphics(but given the budget of Firaxis at the time, the art direction is still amazing).

Get This Game. It's one of those classics which you will keeping coming back for more. Even having owned this masterpiece for more than 5 years, I still play Alpha Centauri every 3 months or so, and it STILL retains its freshness and playability. This one is a definite keeper.

Also, as a parting word, I want to make it clear that, despite the "Sid Meier" name on the package, designer Brian Reynolds(who has since left Firaxis I believe) was the man behind Alpha Centauri and as such deserves the kudoes.
It is THIS game which deserves the title of "true sequel to Civilization II", and not Civ III which has none of the depth that this game has in spades.

Buy it.

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