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Comment by SamPatt | Hacker News Reader

This game was deeply important to me: it's the first time I remember explicitly recognizing different ideological and religious beliefs abstracted away from their particular human instantiations.

I absolutely loved the different factions and what they believed in. It always made me wonder what types of beliefs aliens would have, if they exist.

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It was a great game.

The political system is really great; even though there are only four fields with four options each, it is wonderful that the options aren’t automatically correlated. If you want to have a free market police state, you can. I honestly think playing this game in childhood might get people to think about little bit more about what their politics actually mean (I mean we could also have read some books, but that’s impossible). It also gives just the right feeling for a sci-fi game, because authors love playing with weird political configurations.

I love sci-fi (and fantasy) for that reason (amongst others of course), even if nine times out of ten it's a variation on human cultures, or reduced down to a single dimension, at least early on - Elves are elitist racists, Klingons are angry, etc. But long running series can / will often add nuance over time, with the stereotypes fighting with their own "nature".

It is a shame that "Civilization: Beyond Earth" was such a disappointment. Instead of interesting leaders, factions, and ideologies, we got "Space Africa" and "Space Australia".

I wonder if there some legal issue preventing Firaxis from making a true Centauri remake.

I feel like Beyond Earth was a great game trying to break out of a mediocre one. I love the way the quest system forces you down a particular victory condition, the way you can bully other factions using fear rather than respect, and how the affinity system makes factions that truly feel different toward the end game. I hate how you can pick a quest pathway that you don't have the resources to follow (e.g. you might inadvertently pick a purity quest answer, but only have access to xenomass), how dumb the AI is at victory conditions, and how uninteresting the tech tree (er, I mean web) is.

Yes, there was. Electronic Arts owns the IP for Alpha Centauri and has stonewalled trying to do anything with it.

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