Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

I always prioritize Secret Projects and improvements. I always get trounced.

Peacekeepers are always pussies that even the University (whom I always play) can beat up without a problem early on. This is recommended to stop them getting good tech/wonders before you can. If you are university, they're your only threat in that regard.

As them, do not sell out your techs for nothing, just be prepared to switch to defence for a fair time if the enemy gets pissy that you're not appeasing them. Allowing them to equal you technologically just kills you long term, especially with the major techs like reactors.

I have another question. When you build colonies on the ocean, what determines how each spot will yield? Like is there any reason to build mining platforms over kelp farms and tidal harnesses on some tiles?

All ocean fields will, if nothing is built on them, yield 1 food, and nothing more. With kelp farms that's 3 food (2 if with a mine), mines will add 1 mineral, and tidal harnesses will add 3 energy.

All improvements can only be built on sea shore, not in the deep sea.

So you can get very fast growing bases producing much energy, but the lack of minerals will hurt them, especially if you have a low SUPPORT rating, so on some fields sea mines should be built. However, IMO the primary reason to have sea bases is to to get fast growing energy producers.

Thanks!

One last question; how soon do you change your social engineering? As much as I want to put in, say, free markets and democracy, I find I need to wait till at least Intellectual Integrity so I can put in two units of police.

I can't really answer that since I always choose Green, heh.

I choose democracy mostly as soon as I get it, enjoy the growth bonus for some time, and then some time later enact Green (which cancels out the growth base). Knowledge as soon as I get it. And that's my usual combination.

This old game is being talked about?

I still have both C Ds. The Alpha Centauri and Alpha Centauri + Expansion

Ooh! I bought this game and its expansion from Amazon a few months back. It was the rerelease by British company Sold Out Software. I was afraid that it wouldn't run on my American machine, but bah, it did.

I always play as the Spartans, even though I'm way too timid to try to actually conquer anyone who doesn't declare war on me first.

Fortunately, they always do. Well, Hive and Believers anyway. And Spartans, too, if you're not them.

Sparta has one thing going for them - the music after conquering a base is simply fantastic.

Okay Deidre (Mind) Rapes her opponents early game. If the RNG is favorable then she can easily amass an army of Mind Worms.

My current game is pretty much closing up. I teamed up with Zarkov to wipe out Miriam. Lets just say that having a pact really helps the whole aircraft refueling issue. The end result is that I doubled the number of bases under my control.

OH YES, I AM SO GLAD I FOUND THIS THREAD!!

Alpha Centauri is still one of my all-time faves. The premise, the story, all presented so very well!

I usually play as either Provost Zakharov or Colonel Santiago, sometimes Deirdre Skye. In recent games, I've played as the Spartans, because their military might fits perfectly with my aggressive strategy.

The game's Darker and Edgier aspect was a huge departure from most Civ games. Although I'm not really a Nightmare Fetishist, the creepy Mind Worms and the scary cutscenes for some of the projects like The Self-Aware Colony were well-recieved by my dark, horror-loving side.

edited 22nd Sep '11 6:34:00 AM by DemoralizedAnt

As a Christian, I love pounding the hell out of Miriam. She's every negative stereotype of my religion, rounded into one entirely, unilaterally hateable package.

I enjoyed playing as the Peacekeepers for their veto power, the Drones in the expansion for their industry, the University for their research power... and the Hive for the fun of playing a totalerian dictatorship!

Nerve stapling my own citizens makes me feel like a Complete Monster. I prefer giving them a Peace and Love Utopia at the hands of Deirdre. To those who don't like the idea of being assimilated by The Singularity, well, have fun getting eaten by the Mind Worms.

edited 22nd Sep '11 7:36:28 AM by Fighteer

What is the favourite Secret Project vidieos of my fellow tropers? Mines would include the Longevity Vaccine, the Planeterry Datalinks and the Cloudbase Academy.

Mine is The Voice of Planet. Mainly because of Zahkav's monologue about Punching Out Cthulhu.

edited 3rd Oct '11 2:46:50 PM by lrrose

So, a question for those who've played the game longer: is there any real point in accepting surrender? Or does the AI only ever offer total surrender when they are so weak you can just finish them off anyway?

I ask because in my current game ( just got it from GOG! ), Zhakarov surrendered early when I took his one and only expansion colony, and then proceeded to do nothing much at all until his only city was conquered by someone else later. Granted, I did get all his techs in the surrender bargain. . .

You will always get all techs and energy units of a surrendered faction when you simply ask. Also, their population counts towards yours in the victory rating, so it makes no difference if you conquer the bases or have them be surrendered.

The advantage is that those bases won't count against your effeciency levels. The disadvantage is that, well, they'll remain AI run, and hence not quite as competently as if under the human player, heh.

Here's a question: Anybody else play as the Pirates? I find that they tend to make the game really unfair for the computer players since you can expand so quickly in the early game without worrying about bumping into the other factions' turf, use any social engineering, start at sea with two colony pods (it probably helps that I always use the 70-90% water huge planet), get bonus minerals out of ocean shelf, can terraform ocean and ocean trench, and their boats get three abilities (two normal plus marine detachment), all of which are completely unique advantages (okay, so the aliens can do any social engineering too) that no other side can match (you can replicate most of the other sides' advantages with social engineering and/or secret projects).

Also, am I the only one that the aliens bitch at for using green economics?

edited 3rd Nov '11 6:49:37 PM by Balmung

I don't normally play this one, but a friend wanted me to try it, so I played as the pirates. Given how bad I am at Civ, I'm rather shocked at how easily I beat the game as them. Everything you said is pretty much true, and they really are virtually untouchable by the A.I..

...I fully admit that I went for a full military run, and ended up going full Planet Buster on my enemies...

Eh, I'd do that, but I'm trying to completely exterminate all planet life to see if the game bitches at me for wiping out all of the fungus. Ergo, I'm running police state to get the support points to build several gravship formers a turn, since I can already steamroll Aki-Zeta 5, Yang, and Zakharov all at once with no effort (already crushed both aliens (aggressive asshats with crappy starting positions) and Morgan (hated my green economics and got pissy when I wouldn't give him quantum mechanics when everyone who wasn't me was poking around in fission vehicles))

Okay, so the aliens like planned economics. That doesn't explain why they bitch me out in normal English (I think it was the same as Morgan's response to green economics).

edited 4th Nov '11 4:09:39 AM by Balmung

GOG updated their version of SMAC to include the expansion pack. Since, to the best of my knowledge, Alien Crossfire has been incompatible with the last few versions of Windows and GOG is including it for free with purchases of the base game (and if you already bought the base game from them, you can redownload it for free), this is awesome.

SMAX already worked fine in Vista and 7, but it's nice to be able to get it WITHOUT pirating it.

Every time I play this game I love it. I prefer going Deidre Skye, because who doesn't want humungous armies of Mindworms and fast travel through xenofungus?

I find it hard to get conquest victories though, so I shoot straight for Ascent to Transcendence. Hard work though.

a bit, thanks for letting us know of the deal on Gog. Just bought it again, 8-0

edited 16th Jan '13 9:07:42 PM by TamH70

I've been playing other factions for shiggles.

Playing as the Believers has some unexpected advantages, with the biggest being that you are in an abnormally good position to act as a mediator, because by removing the aggressive AI!Miriam, you've already defused like 80% of all potential vendettas, meaning you just have to keep Yang and Lal from killing each other if you're trying to keep the peace (as I was to make sure they all paid back their giant loans) and with some creative social engineering, you can more or less negate the research penalty. Also, when combined with secret projects, the Believers, rather uniquely can run Democratic and still get +4 Support.

Morgans + Wealth = so much money and research I don't even know what to do with it all.

Gaians do fine at conquest, though early game conquest isn't my thing. Also, large armies of mindworms are problematic due to support costs.

I still have to really play the others, but I kinda want to force the Drones or Cult to NOT suck.