History VideoGame / SidMeiersAlphaCentauri

** The flavor texts however depict a more philosophical and cultured Miriam that one could suspect from the in-game stats of the Believers faction. As detalied above in the GameplayAndStorySegregation section, she is more skeptical about the misuse that can be done with technology by bad-intentioned people, and the risks of unrestricted scientific research without ethics. The most extreme example is probably her mistrust of artificial intelligence, which she fears could lead to AIIsACrapshoot. Still, she can research anyway related technologies and employ their products.
--> "Already we have turned all of our critical industries, all of our material resources, over to these...things...these lumps of silver and paste we call nanorobots. And now we propose to teach them intelligence? What, pray tell, will we do when these little homunculi awaken one day announce that they have no further need for us? - Sister Miriam Godwinson, "We Must Dissent". Accompanies the Industrial Nanorobotics technology"
** Similarly, the flavor text for the Mind/Machine Interface technology is a blurb by Pravin Lal of the Peacekeepers who vehemently warns about the risks of this technology invading the "sanctity" of human's mind, a possible violation of human rights that could result in MindRape and a MindControlDevice. His skepticism is comparable (if not more extreme) to Miriam's disdain for intelligent nanorobots. However, at no point is Lal depicted as technophobic as Miriam, and he can too research this technology and deploy its inventions.
--> "I think, and my thoughts cross the barrier into the synapses of the machine - just as the good doctor intended. But what I cannot shake, and what hints at things to come, is that thoughts cross back. In my dreams the sensibility of the machine invades the periphery of my consciousness. Dark. Rigid. Cold. Alien. Evolution is at work here, but just what is evolving remains to be seen. - Commissioner Pravin Lal, "Man and Machine". Accompanies the Neural Grafting technology."
--> "The Warrior's bland acronym, MMI, obscures the true horror of this monstrosity. Its inventors promise a new era of genius, but meanwhile unscrupulous power brokers use its forcible installation to violate the sanctity of unwilling human minds. They are creating their own private army of demons. - Commissioner Pravin Lal, "Report on Human Rights". Accompanies the Mind/Machine Interface technology"

** On a wider scale, the in-game balancing of the Believers is based upon a stereotypical backward fanatic religious civilization with severe drawbacks in research and an AI personality geared towards aggressive expansion (which is the most feasible strategy for human players too). However, the flavor texts and quotes depict Miriam as more acute, cultured, and wise than it might seem. She doesn't reject science and technology per se, she is actually quite competent in topics ranging from psychology to physics and philosophy too. The thing is that she's skeptical about the potential misdeeds that could be accomplished by not-well-intentioned people, and by the risks emerging from the lack of ethics when pursuing certain paths of knowledge. She is also skeptical about how technology can be used to control people, or even replace them, and reinforce oppression against free thought. Of course, what she judges to be ethical or moral is influenced by her religious views. One would expect the faction to be more of a contemplating, isolationist civilization dedicated to inwards perfection and religious cult, rather than the warmongering fanatics we meet in actual gameplay.
-->"Evil lurks in the datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear. But it was never the streets that were evil."
-->"The Morgans fear what may not be purchased, for a trader cannot comprehend a thing that is priceless."

* NoPlaceForMeThere[=/=]NecessarilyEvil: The Cult of Planet will build industrial capacity in their attempt to purge Planet of the pollution of humanity; they acknowledge this and will destroy them last once everything else is cleansed.

* NoPlaceForMeThere[=/=]NecessaryEvil: The Cult of Planet will build industrial capacity in their attempt to purge Planet of the pollution of humanity; they acknowledge this and will destroy them last once everything else is cleansed.

* AndTheAdventureContinues: If another faction gains transcendence first, the game ends with the player returning to human form and going back to Earth and other worlds to spread life amongst the stars. This is also what other humans do if the player wins a transcendence victory.

* AlternateCalendar: Played with. The colonist factions use the "Mission Year" calendar, which is presumably synchronized with Planet. On the other hand, it carries over the year count from the AD/CE system instead of dating from the ''Unity'''s arrival, possibly as a reminder of their origins on Earth.

** Whatever happened to Earth and everyone living there between 2060 and 2096 (since it would take four years for radio signals to reach Alpha Centauri at lightspeed) is never revealed, although the game can end with colonists returning to Earth to find out.

-->—[[Literature/TheBible The Conclave Bible]], [[EncyclopediaExposita Datalinks]] (paraphrase of Gen. 3:23-24)

* The game introduces native Mindworms to replace the barbarians of the Civilization games. However, players could also capture Mindworms and even breed their own.

** You can also trade bases with rival factions, including everything that's inside of them. However, the AI is very bad at this, and will happily exchange a huge economic and industrial center (filled with buildings, secret projects, and powerful high-level units, and with nearby tiles having special resources) with your 1 pop god-forsaken sea base founded in the middle of an oceanic rift where there are no resources at all.
** Its SpiritualSuccessor ''VideoGame/CivilizationBeyondEarth'', meanwhile, features a covert operation in which you can recruit defectors from another faction's army and thereby be given free military units.
** Beyond Earth's DLC 'Rising Tide' gave Harmony-aligned Explorer units the ability to 'leash' alien units, putting them under the control of the same player as the explorer. Unfortunately (or ''fortunately'', depending on what biome you're playing on), once harnessed, an alien loses any biome-based buffs or debuffs applied to enemy aliens. [[note]]for example, aliens in an Arid biome are rarer but tougher, meaning they're harder to find and will get weaker when leashed, while aliens in a Lush biome are more plentiful but weaker, meaning there is plenty to capture and they'll get stronger when you do.[[/note]]

As the SpiritualSuccessor of the ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}}'' series, ''Alpha Centauri'' features incredibly complex and profound gameplay, with a myriad of options and variables that can leave an unskilled player dazed with too much information, although a Civilization player can pick up the game and get started right away. Like the ''Civilization'' games, in ''Alpha Centauri'' you start with a single city, and your job is to create more Colony Pods to expand your colony with new cities, carefully nurture the ones you already have so they can reach a high population and become productive and profitable, research new technologies to unlock new units and options, and if you want to (though it's not necessary) or have to (because [[SpitefulAI the AI can be positively bloody-minded]]), wage war on everyone else. As is common in the series, there are [[FourX four ways to win the game]]: Conquest (just KillEmAll), Economic (gather enough [[EnergyEconomy Energy]]—the game's GlobalCurrency—to buy everyone else's bases), Political (get elected as Supreme Leader by the Planetary Council), and Technological (clear the entire TechTree and AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence, or, if you're an alien, summon your ultra-advanced fleet to blow the rest of Planet away). Also familiar: your civilization is pestered by Planet's native life, similar to the barbarian tribes in the ''Civilization'' games. About the only real flaw in the game, if flaw it could be called, was that the expansion kept the seven-faction limit (Players could either choose their opponents or randomize them.) as opposed to expanding it to cover all fourteen.

* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: Humans blasting on aliens with nerve gas is just fine, but ''God forbid'' if you use it against other humans! But then, the aliens make no bones about the fact that they consider humans little more than undesirable pests and there's a [[KillEmAll reason]] that human bases that they take over drop down to population 1.

* ShownTheirWork: And how! According to Wiki/TheOtherWiki, ''lots'' of science fiction books were consulted during the making of this game.

[[WikiRule Naturally]] has a [[http://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Main_Page wiki]].

The game is relatively old, and hard to find in most retail stores nowadays, but it's worth searching out for any fan of hard, complex strategy and simulation games. It is available on [[http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/sid_meiers_alpha_centauri GOG.com]] for $5.99 (now, ''finally,'' including the expansion for free). Alternatively, you can buy VideoGame/{{Civilization}} IV and download [[http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=252829 Planetfall]], a fan-made Civilization IV mod which takes Alpha Centauri's setting (leaders, quotes, and technologies included, with entirely reworked graphics) and mixes it with Civ IV's gameplay improvements.

* IllGirl: Aki Zeta-5 in the {{backstory}} suffered from rheumatic fever three weeks before planetfall.

* HumansKillWantonly: Long before realizing nature of the Planet and mind worms, humans (with exception of pro-green factions) treat the Planet more or less as their promised land full of opportunities to profit in many different ways. [[UpToEleven And wage wars based on tiny ideological differences]].

* AlienSky: Alpha Centauri is a trinary system, with two great suns and a third smaller and farther one.[[note]]Alpha Centauri C -- ''aka'' Proxima Centauri -- orbits much farther out than A and B ("Hercules") and would barely be visible from the surface of Chiron, and thus anyone living there would not consider it a third "sun" in any meaningful sense. Sol would appear much brighter in the night sky than Proxima, as an extra star in the constellation Cassiopeia. (Of course the brightest star in Centaurus would be missing, and a few of the other nearby stars would be in very different positions in the night sky.[[/note]] Planet's atmosphere is a bright yellow, claimed to offset life-threatening greenhouse gases generated by being too close to Alpha Centauri A.

* AlienSky: Alpha Centauri is a trinary system, with two great suns and a third smaller and farther one. Planet's atmosphere is a bright yellow, claimed to offset life-threatening greenhouse gases generated by being too close to Alpha Centauri A.

** Part of the gene sequence that scrolls across the screen in the "Human Genome Project" video spells out "[[Film/{{GATTACA}}]]".

** Part of the gene sequence that scrolls across the screen in the "Human Genome Project" video spells out "[[Film/{{GATTACA}}".

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: The Diplomacy victory heavily implies that after the original ''Unity'' mission is restored under your faction's leadership, humanity will soon abandon Planet and seek greener pastures. Having regained access to space flight capacities and the necessary logistics on hand, why ''should'' they stay on a world out to kill them?

** The Spartans, by contrast, latch onto the chronic instability of much of Latin America at the turn of the century.

* GrayAndGreyMorality: About the only ones officially called out as evil are the [[ScaryDogmaticAliens Usurpers]]; the others are shown to have their good points and their bad. Even the Hive, Believers, Cult of Planet, and Caretakers are [[WellIntentionedExtremist Well Intentioned Extremists]] with some valid points.