Alpha Centauri
filfre.net
filfre.net
wow. ive never understood why AC worked while Civ5/6 fell off the map for me, but i think this was it.
The "meat" of the plot was the audio snippets that would pop up whenever you researched a tech, built a facility for the first time or finished a secret project. Most of them were quite fascinating and had a haunting beauty to them [0]. The way that Chairman Yang half-laughs when discussing the genejack, how adament Morgan is about the right of present generations exploiting fossil fuels, Lal's horror at the outcomes of Mind/Machine interface.
This game was the first time I had encountered the art of telling stories through crumbs, instead of one fixed and full narrative like most stories.
I agree with the article in that the mechanics of the game weren't ideal. Personally as someone that LOVES 4x and has spent _way_ too much time playing them, I think the format is fundamentally flawed and cannot be saved (e.g. expanding is too overpowered, games become too dull to close out - given the win was effectively gained hundreds of turns ago, AI being too costly to implement and difficult to balance). IMHO the best 4x game that will come out at some point in the future won't actually follow the 4x format.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hou-Iwv1GvM&list=PL3DDD41A3E...
Particularly good ones:
1-22 fac : 9:13 - Chairman Yang - Genejacks.
23-38 fac : 3:22 - Project PYRRHO
0-24 techs : 1:16 - Nwabudike Morgan - The Ethics of Greed.
0-24 techs : 8:06 - Sister Miram - We must dissent
25-49 techs: 2:17 - Chairman Yang - Looking god in the eye
25-49 techs : 4:26 - Prokhor Zakharov - For I have tasted the fruit
25-49 techs : 6:03 - Commissioner Lal - Mind Machine Interface
I think it would be fun to maybe not even be entirely aligned with one country and act as some sort of third party that can impact the growth or decline of other empires. So the AI is still playing the 4x around you but you're not locked into a given team.
This might allow you to pick and choose some of the fun parts (e.g. exploring for a given civ at the start of the game, or picking a expansion spot for their second city) while sidelining the less fun parts.
I did prove that this general kind of "blind coop" game/quest can be fun in a different setting ... but it was way too much work without more automation than I managed to implement. Balance and mechanics are hard to get right with constraints like this, and AIs are dumb so it's hard to automate your testing ... for something the players (and QM) will probably only stick around for once.
> ... you are trampling on the garden of an angry God and he awaits you just beyond the last theorem!
I get chills.
I think the problem is that the playerbase seems to want both "fair rules", where every ai you meet is playing the same game as you, and an experience of exponential growth.
I think these two demands are fundamentally impossible to do well at the same time. Too small differences early on snowball into too large differences too quickly. You either have to limit the growth hard, or you need to play against a "gm" that fudges everything behind the scenes to provide you an engaging experience throughout the game.
My wishlist for a proper civ successor is a game that takes you from a single village to a globe-spanning superpower, not on a single map with a single handful of opponents, but starting as a village with village-sized opponents which you will conquer or co-opt, expanding the scope of the game, the map and creating new opponents matched to your progress as you progress through the eras.
In principle this could be achieved through the agar.io approach. Spawn the map with 100s of small fish. Small fish either swallow or get swallowed, and increasingly over time, you get fewer and fewer, bigger and bigger fish.
I think it's fine if people don't like what 4X games are like currently, but I don't think that doing something different should be at the expense of those who do like what exists. One of my great frustrations with Civ VII was that they were attempting to solve a problem I don't agree the game had (boring late game), using methods that took away what I did enjoy about the game (building up a civ over time).
I just think _somewhere_ there's a better receipe.
Yeah, your decisions are very important in the early game (because that's what determines the speed at which your snowball grows), but as your faction grows, your individual decisions become more and more meaningless and monotonous.
One possible approach is to have the player's role gradually shift somehow, from micromanagement to providing overall strategic direction.
OP states:
>Meanwhile the automation functions are undermined by being abjectly stupid more often than not. Your governor will happily continue researching string theory while his rioting citizens are burning the place down around his ears. You can try to fine-tune his instructions, but there comes a point when you realize that it’s easier just to do everything yourself.
I wonder if turning it into a programming game could help address this problem? Then again, I'd be tempted to re-use my "code" across various playthroughs. Probably most players would go to the wiki to copy some "code" which is known to perform quite well.
Avid Civ/Paradox-Player here as well. I've been banging my head into 4X design for a while as well, and it's hard. In the somewhat classical formula Civ, Master of Orion, Stellaris and such provide - and even many RTS, it's always the same situation as you have in chess: The better executed early game usually wins.
And strangely enough, in a chess middle game, you have better comback opportunities. In Stellaris, you can at times lose a fight, but if you have enough defenses left and sufficiently more production than your enemy, you still win, just slower than you might have. In Starcraft, you may be able to pull out of a bad fight, If you can, and have good production, you stay ahead. Giving back a piece advantage in chess is a much bigger deal and a much bigger loss.
From there, I can't help but think that many, many 4X games in the classical formula boil down to the right few choices in the early game and then it's about correct execution/conversion. And I haven't really found a way around that.
Or, rather, a way around that is to make the situation asymmetric or rather to change the formula. They are billions comes to mind, or Against the Storm. Don't fight equal and similarly shaped empires, but something else.
Alpha Centauri presents its tech to you the same way, but it's inventions are science fiction, and likewise the quotes [1] are fictional, from the important characters, the major players of the various factions within. You get a real sense for the groups involved and the major players from such. You get a sense of the civilizations involved, sometimes presented in their folklore or humor. For example, the militaristic Spartans quote a variation of an old marching cadence - "I don't know but I've been told / Deirdre's got a Network Node / Likes to press the on-off switch / Dig that crazy Gaian witch!"
My favorite, though, and feeling ever more prescient:
"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Commissioner Pravin Lal U.N. Declaration of Rights"
[1] A good compendium of them - https://www.generationterrorists.com/quotes/smac.html
This is a very general problem, and doesn't detract much for any idea about any one thing in particular.
As the good Prokhor put it:
> Man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true rather than what the evidence shows to be likely and possible has always astounded me. We long for a caring Universe which will save us from our childish mistakes, and in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary we will pin all our hopes on the slimmest of doubts. God has not been proven not to exist, therefore he must exist.
Also, I bet the Internet archive or exoDOS will have a perfect copy. The latter is a one click experience. Check the laws in your country for whether these are legal.
I know the last time I picked it up, there were a well respected set of patches from scient (a quick google pointed me to https://github.com/DrazharLn/scient-unofficial-smacx-patch ). Somewhere in here is a pre-done distribution you can just click and run with for modern windows.
The simplicity of early Civs with a modern, fully baked interface. Maybe with hexes instead of squares if that doesn't break the game. FreeCiv exists, but it doesn't feel modern either.
and you no longer can do nice square grid for your buildings or 90 degree positioning
With hexes, I like how you can move in any direction and see the same number of new tiles; with squares, you're compelled to walk in diagonals to see more stuff and it feels icky.
It's a shame the totally-not-a-SMAC-sequel Civ: Beyond Earth did not not do it justice.
That and the X-COM: UFO Defense opening cinematic lol
>If Alpha Centauri inspires a few young scientists and astronauts; if it convinces a few more citizens to write to their congressmen and work to rejuvenate our space program, humanity’s space program, that will surely be its greatest and most lasting accomplishment.
I'm thinking given the comments here it succeeded.
https://oldgamesdownload.com/wp-content/uploads/Sid_Meiers_A...
Your comment stirred a memory in the back of my head and I jumped up to check, and I still have it! I found it on my book shelf!
Baldurs gate 2 had a similarly impressive manual, if I remember correctly, it was spiral bound so it would lay flat and had tabbed sections. can't find it however.
It's playable in all sorts of ways (against AI, Humans, real-time, long-turn) via https://www.freecivweb.com in the browser, without having to install anything.
There are many different rule-sets now, the most modern and balanced seems to be
https://freeciv.fandom.com/wiki/Multiplayer_II_Dragoon_Summa...
https://freeciv.fandom.com/wiki/Design_Log.mp2d
https://freeciv.fandom.com/wiki/Multiplayer_II:_Dragoon,_Gam...
Be warned, it can be a massive time-sink!
You even had to genetically engineer your colonists, so they could withstand the environments. Fun game, but I can't find it via Google.
If anyone knows this game, please share. I'd love to play it again.
Huh, I'd never have guessed. I thought that was the best part! Felt much more "organic" than Civilization's pre-constructed units.
"The mountain stands eternal, watching all. Did you, yesterday's self, feel its silent gaze upon your deeds? Did you carve truth into its stone or merely scatter dust? Speak, for the mountain remembers what we forget."
— Lady Deirdre Skye, "Planet Dreams"
"The keyboard is but a crude interface, a mechanical bridge between flesh and the machine's cold logic. The soul of the machine, if it exists, lies not in the clatter of keys but in the dance of electrons, where thought and code entwine. Fingertips? They are mere conduits, sparking the connection, yet they carry no more divinity than the wires beneath. To seek the soul, look deeper—past the surface, into the patterns of data that pulse like a living mind."
— Academician Prokhor Zakharov, "For I Have Tasted The Fruit"
"A cup of wine may seem a mere vessel, but its depths hold the folly of men who seek oceans in fleeting pleasures. Drink wisely, lest you drown in your own excess."
— Sister Miriam Godwinson, "The Blessed Struggle"
"Solace in profit? A fleeting comfort, like coins slipping through fingers. Power? A heavier chain, binding the soul to ambition’s treadmill. Both are but shadows of true wealth—a life of wisdom and harmony with Planet’s pulse. Seek not to own, but to understand, and solace will bloom eternal."
— Lady Deirdre Skye, "Conversations with Planet"
i love that one of my favorite parts of the game (designing your own units) was the game designers' least favorite parts. hah!
i never read the pandora sequence that inspired it - thank you for sharing this article!
This is an interesting lesson in game design. The reason the mind worms fight using morale rather that conventional combat is because otherwise they wouldn't scale as your troops get stronger.
Supposing the mind worms had fixed conventional strength--on par with that of an ordinary early-game scout, for example. Then as soon as you get proton missiles or whatever, mind worms would no longer provide a challenge. But if you made mind worms challenging for the late game, then they'd be impossible in the early game. Hence the creation of a parallel combat strength scale, to better manage the mind worm difficulty curve.