Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Know what I love about fighting Progenitors? Unrestricted chemical warfare and repercussion free destruction of their badly placed bases.

Dammit, now I'm digging through boxes trying to find my burned disks for the game. I bought them years ago when they came out and a few years back a friend gave me a modified Windows XP version.

Well, the first big war on Planet is done and the alien scum is the clear loser.

Current survivors:

• The Cybernetic Consciousness (Me)
  • First place by a wide margin due to obscene technological advantages and gains from the war.
• The Nautilus Pirates
  • Second place due to near uncontested ICS, even on a mostly-land Planet. I occasionally buy their bases when they mess with my borders and infringe on my resource rights.
• The Manifold Usurpers
  • Still alive for a few reasons: one, they aren't terribly close to me. Two, they were smart enough to peace out with me. Three, they were willing to do so because on account of the first reason, I hadn't nerve gassed them out of existence or exterminated any bases that used to be theirs.
• The Data Angels
  • They like that I've saved their asses, but loathe my Police State, so I can't keep a pact with them. Got beat up really badly in the war with the Caretakers and still recovering. I intend to use them as an unwilling buffer against the Usurpers.
• The Human Hive
  • Dirt poor and stuck on a small peninsula on the bottom of the map. The Pirates have them boxed in. Also, despite liking my social engineering, they hate my guts. I've traded war with these chumps for various favors repeatedly, though they hated me first. I'm currently mad at him for voting against my proposal to revoke the UN Charter.

Dead:

• Caretakers
  • Fought everyone except for the Believers and Hive all at once. I shifted from infrastructure research to military research and went from slightly behind (lasers and plasma steel vs impact cannons and 3-res armor) to far ahead (chaos guns, silksteel, needlejets, and fusion reactors vs missiles and 3-res armor). Also, nerve gas everywhere.
    • Is it just me or are the Caretakers almost consistently unreasonably belligerent?
• Believers
  • Shared a crappy rock with the Hive and got too belligerent with the neighbors. Not particularly missed.

Rotpar,it's available on Gog.com

You know what I'd like to see now that we have computers that can actually reasonably run it? An updated version of the game where you can include all of the different factions on the same Planet (including the Alien Crossfire ones) at once.

Yeah, I'm not buying a game I already own.

Hmmm, Alpha Centauri and System Shock 2 were the first games I bought with my money, from my job, for my computer.

edited 23rd Apr '14 12:10:58 PM by Rotpar

Aaaand you can get non burned version at cheap price on gog Along with bonuses like avatars and crap that you can download from gog

edited 23rd Apr '14 1:22:45 PM by SpookyMask

So I picked this game up from GOG during the sale, and I am absolutely literally everything about it, but I just cannot wrap my head around one thing: the combat.

What kind of units should I be building? How many? Should I be stacking units? How do I manage Support? Police? Abilities? Artillery? Probe Teams? Naval and Air combat?

All the customization AC offers is amazing, but also a bit daunting.

Gamefaqs is your friend, plus there are a lot of wikis out there for the game. I would give tips but what works for me would probably not work for you and my playstyle is a confused bastard hybrid anyway.

I am terrible so I just build mass mind worms for all situations, since they don't have to worry about weapons or armor.

"What kind of units should I be building? How many? Should I be stacking units? How do I manage Support? Police? Abilities? Artillery? Probe Teams? Naval and Air combat?"

• What kinds?
  • Always have a defender (infantry, high armor, no weapon, trance and comm jammer) protecting your bases. Even if it's safe from the AI, it never hurts to protect against surprise Mind Worm attacks, and they provide police services.
  • For attackers, you can build infantry with high attack and defense at reasonable costs. Do so. For Rovers and Hovertanks, unless you're filthy stinking rich, go all-in on offense.
  • Air units - needlejets can't be attacked by most units while in the air, copters can attack a bajillion times a turn, and gravships float forever and can capture bases.
• How many? As many as you need, and preferably no more.
  • You always need more Formers
• Stacking? I've never needed to rely on it.
• Support? I try to stay below my max free units at all times. When you can support two units per base (or even just one), a defender, a Former, and a colony pod to build the next base (and if you build it before the base grows, there's no population cost for the colony pod) works well.
• Police? Usually one per base, if the drones get uppity, consider giving them the police special ability or making a second. Also, IIRC, only land units count.
• Abilities? Find some that work for you. I usually use Soporific Gas Pods as a staple for non-sea units and the second is a bit situational. Also, unless you have 3 or more support, Clean Reactor is great (and not completely worthless, even then). Note that stealth abilities are worthless to The All-Seeing A.I..
• Artillery? Don't bother, I never have, at least beyond using naval ships to soften targets up after the seas are sterilized. Land artillery is weak, expensive, and tends to get ganked by the first normal unit to find it.
• Probe Teams? Some people swear by them, personally, I find them useless, especially since I'm almost always the tech leader, even as the Believers or Drones. Just grab the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm for (near) immunity to them.
• Naval combat? Basically the same as ground combat. You want a big gun and tough armor. Cruisers make better transports than foils (hold twice as many units) and move faster, but fight exactly the same. Also, ships can (and should) have heavy armor AND weapons.
• Air combat? It's mostly air-to-ground since a special ability is needed to intercept flying needlejets and gravships. All gun, no armor is the way to go here.

edited 23rd Apr '14 5:19:14 PM by Balmung

Thanks for the tips. I'm playing a game as the Hive right now, and I'm learning how balance between keeping my infrastructure and my military up to date. My SE choices pretty much means that everyone hates me (except Miriam), so I need to have an edge.

But I do like the of starting a game as the Gaians and just mindworm rushing everything.

edited 23rd Apr '14 6:24:03 PM by Eschaton

What's your Social Engineering?

Police State/Planned/Power (just switched from Wealth). I noticed Yang doesn't get the Efficiency negatives, so the bonuses are nice, but it doesn't make any friends. I've been in a war with Lal for a while, unsurprisingly, but he's on another continent and hasn't been a threat.

The war I'm focusing on is with Zak (and I allied with Miriam against him), but we're been at a stalemate on a fungus-covered chokepoint with The Ruins, with a city on each side. But I've started sending a stream of probe cruisers into his smaller coastal cities to steal techs, and that's already been extremely profitable.

I would think that Santiago would be on your side with that Social Engineering. And I'm surprised Miriam isn't trying to string you up for having the gall to not run Fundamentalist. The others I can understand (Morgan hates you for not running Free Market, Deidre hates you both for your Police State AND for not running Green, Lal hates you for running Police State, and Zakharov is mad that you aren't running Knowledge).

If you want an easier first game, consider trying Svensgard on a huge, mostly water map. Even a large, mostly land map gives him a lot of uncontested expansion room.

It's not called Alpha Centauri II, but that's pretty much what I feel Beyond Earth is going to be.

It's a complete reboot of the concept. SMAC may certainly provide some useful references for what works and what doesn't work, but it's not going to look or feel like Alpha Centauri II. At least, I hope it won't... except in as much as any Civ game tends to follow the same basic concepts, at least.

edited 24th Apr '14 7:14:30 AM by Fighteer

I'd imagine it would about as different from SMAC as Civ 5 is from Civ 2.

Has anyone ever seen the AI commit atrocities, even with the UN Charter revoked? Because I don't think I've ever seen it use chemical weapons, even in human vs alien conflicts, I'm positive that I've never seen it use a planet buster. Not sure about nerve stapling, either.

I'm pretty sure I've seen them use nerve stapling, but otherwise no.

My current game is turning out very different than I planned; I was playing the conciousness and hoping I'd be able to just expand and tech up relatively peacefully, only to find that I was sandwiched between Yang and Santiago, the latter of whom almost immediately decided to invade me over not giving out free tech, forcing me to ally with Yang, only for him to betray me out of nowhere.

Then suddenly Santiago offers me a pact and isn't seething anymore, which I accepted given that Yang's army was about 10 times larger than mine, and now I've been dragged into a war with pretty much every other faction in the game besides Morgan, and I feel like the Spartans will almost inevitabley start shit when they Morgan's army just doesn't measure up to everyone else's.

The main reason I asked is because I'm almost starting to feel guilty. Not that I'm waging unrestricted chemical warfare and slaughtering tens of thousands of innocents who simply settled in the wrong place. No, mostly because the AI won't seem to do the same to me, even though it would help them make up for the extreme disparity between their military tech and mine. I've even seen them build nerve gas units, but not actually use the special ability. They build and threaten with Planet Busters, but never fire them, even as a last resort. It's kind of disappointing, really.

I had to deal with one bunch of Believers who planetbusted at me. Note that I'd already written them off as a savable faction and had declared unrestricted chemical Apocalypse Now on them.

Re: the new factions, don't count out Domai. He's even better than Miriam and Yang at overcoming the research penalty through sheer weight of building more stuff faster. (Also, in my hands he normally grows his bases a lot faster than Yang.)

@Ultimatum: A peaceful Believer game, as Balmung suggested, works but only because the player is massively superior to the AI. Believer builder games in general require a much more active style than just building a swarm of bases, because, especially in the early-to-midgame, you also want to be probing for tech.

edited 26th Apr '14 12:53:54 AM by Ramidel

If you're new to this, just go with Gaians and use mind worms. But definitely try to get to helicopters ASAP. You're gonna need copters when the planet starts to get even.

Also, learn how to use supply crawlers.

/trying to not replay the game again

Domai's neat, but I loathe being unable to run Green. I mean, I like his bonuses, but the lack of the Planet bonuses (and efficiency) kinda blows.

I find 'copters to be overrated. The "attack several times in a turn" thing is neat, but the fact that they crash for 30% damage at the end of the turn is really painful. Also, the AI transfers control of so many needlejets that my non-gravship air force needs. Also, due to how psi combat works (all percent-based damage in increments of 10%), advising them for fighting back against planetlife sounds to me like malicious advice, especially when a single ECM/Trance infantryman in a base, especially with a perimeter defense, tachyon field, and sensor (and if you're really cheesy, a bunker) can stop an ungodly number of mindworms/locusts, even with a substantial morale disadvantage.

And supply crawlers are nice, but you'd be amazed how much you can get done without even bothering with them.

Well, it's better than needlejets crashing completely after two turns. :)

Copter crashes are a nuisance, not a serious problem, unless you've sent them into an already risky situation. X-Copters are even better in the event that you've decided to just fricking erase a faction (or you're fighting aliens to the death). I agree that using copters against Planet is dumb, though.

And inefficiency can be a nuisance (as can a lategame inability to green out). On the other hand, Domai can use e-crawlers like no one else, so doing all of your research at home base makes quite a bit of sense for him.

edited 26th Apr '14 4:51:29 AM by Ramidel