Invaders! Possibly From Space!!

[Ravenloff]

I have longed for a sequal, or at least updated version, for Alpha Centauri. When Civ III and IV came out with no customizable units, I thought we had taken a step backwards or, at the very least, not embraced a very cool innovation to the genre.

Anyhoo, try this if you miss SMAC.

Pick any world-type you like, but set it for rampaging barbarians and hostile civs.

Go into world-builder (try not to see where the other civs are, its an honesty thing) and give yourself five or six citys, increase their culture just enough to give them all normal city radii, put an archer in each one and award yourself all of the basic techs, like mining/agro/wheel/fishing, etc.

The general theme I like to think about as I play this is that you are part of a colony ship heading to another planet, but something goes wrong, the ship breaks up, and you end up with a bunch of colonists, but completely lost tech. You know the basics and you start with a couple of settlements rather than one, but if you tweak the difficulty, it ends up being quite a lot of fun.

[Pinchak]

I don't know... the "aliens" carrying axes would ruin the emersion for me.

[_BuRjaCi_]

Originally posted by Pinchak
I don't know... the "aliens" carrying axes would ruin the emersion for me.

Maybe they're Klingons, and you just don’t see the ridges because of the shiny metal helmet.

[Bkeela]

They really do have to make SMAC II, and soon! People are going a little crazy.

[snoopy369]

EA owns the rights to SMAC iirc, so it's probably not going to happen. No reason for EA to give up those rights, and no realistic chance they can do it without using Firaxis and still succeed [CTP anyone?].

[_BuRjaCi_]

Originally posted by Bkeela
They really do have to make SMAC II, and soon! People are going a little crazy.

Oh, and when did you notice that?

[Robert]

Why don't you create a civ4-SMAC mod?

[ZEE]

Originally posted by CyberShy
Why don't you create a civ4-SMAC mod?

already in the works for those interested...

http://www.apolyton.com/civgroups/news.php?s=&civgroupid=70

pieceâ„¢

[Alexander I]

Nope. Just Giant Death Robots, people.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by snoopy369
EA owns the rights to SMAC iirc, so it's probably not going to happen. No reason for EA to give up those rights, and no realistic chance they can do it without using Firaxis and still succeed [CTP anyone?].

I thought the original CTP was a good game for its day. It had several features that I found annoying, but it also addressed some flaws in the design of Civ II. So I'm not convinced that Firaxis is the only group that could come up with a worthwhile successor to Alpha Centauri - although it's hard to imagine anyone else doing it as well as they could.

I really think laws governing so-called "intellectual property" issues ought to contain a sort of "use it or lose it" provision in which a company that owns "intellectual property" rights, but that refuses to make a good faith effort to use those rights, can be forced to allow others to use the "intellectual property" in question. Allowing a company just to sit on ownership of rights, not doing anything significant with the rights itself while at the same time blocking anyone else from doing so, works directly against the U.S. Constitution's clear statement of the purpose of such rights: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts."

Similarly, non-compete clauses in contracts should be valid only as long as the company that benefits from the clauses continues to work in good faith to keep its own products up to date. If a company deliberately tries to use a non-compete clause as leverage to force customers to settle for a product it has allowed to become obsolete instead of having access to a new, significantly better product, the clause should be regarded as clearly contrary to the public interest and thus unenforceable.

Both of these concepts are based on a deeper concept regarding the purpose of a free market economy. The purpose of a free market is to allow people to make money by providing people with value, not to allow people to make money by denying people value. Up to a certain point, so-called "intellectual property" laws can do more good by encouraging people to create value than they cause harm by restricting access to the value that has been created. But current laws often allow "intellectual property owners" to use their rights in ways that go far beyond that point.

[GeoModder]

Originally posted by snoopy369
EA owns the rights to SMAC iirc, so it's probably not going to happen. No reason for EA to give up those rights, and no realistic chance they can do it without using Firaxis and still succeed [CTP anyone?].

Firaxis still could go a bit the realistic route and announce a "Gliese 581" game.

[FrostyBoy]

Alpha Centauri Mod? Why did no one tell me? I could have helped!!

[Kuciwalker]

I really think laws governing so-called "intellectual property" issues ought to contain a sort of "use it or lose it" provision in which a company that owns "intellectual property" rights, but that refuses to make a good faith effort to use those rights, can be forced to allow others to use the "intellectual property" in question. Allowing a company just to sit on ownership of rights, not doing anything significant with the rights itself while at the same time blocking anyone else from doing so, works directly against the U.S. Constitution's clear statement of the purpose of such rights: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts."

To quibble, no it doesn't. By making older works unavailable, they increase the value (and price) of newer works, feeding more money to the creative companies.

[Kuciwalker]

Also, the courts will probably never strike down a copyright law because it doesn't sufficiently promote the progress of science and useful arts. Whether a law does would usually be a political question, one for Congress to decide.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Also, the courts will probably never strike down a copyright law because it doesn't sufficiently promote the progress of science and useful arts. Whether a law does would usually be a political question, one for Congress to decide.

You're missing an important part of the picture. Questions of what the Constitution says ought to be important in the political process, not just in the courts. When companies try to act as if they had an inalienable "property" right to make as much money as they possibly can off their ideas without regard to how their decisions affect consumers, voters need to remind Congress that the purpose of copyright law is ultimately to benefit society as a whole. Under the Constitution, the benefits granted to "intellectual property" holders are nothing more than a means toward that end.

I should also mention that progress depends not just on how much content is created but also on how many people have access to that content. Our founders had a vision that copyright law would give authors a sufficient amount of time to obtain a reasonable profit from their work, after which time their work would become available for everyone to enjoy. Current U.S. copyright law makes a mockery of that concept.

To quibble, no it doesn't. By making older works unavailable, they increase the value (and price) of newer works, feeding more money to the creative companies.

So what? Why should Congress presume that I am better off buying an inferior, entirely new game than I would be buying an updated and improved version of an older game? The Civilization series offers three prime examples of how updated, improved versions of older games can be among the best on the market: Civ II, Civ III, and Civ IV.

If a new game is really worthwhile, it ought to be able to make money without having a company sit on older titles and prevent anyone from updating them in order to reduce the competition. If the only way a company can make a profit off a new game is to deliberately sit on its rights to older games and prevent anyone from updating them, then the progress the company is blocking ought to be considered more valuable than the progress the company is offering instead.