SMAC on Trial

[BillyM]

You think you've been playing SMAC? Apparently you don't understand
the value of the Design Workshop and how big an impact on the game custom designed units can have. The built-in units are horrible compared to expending a little effort tinkering. Build Probe Foils next time you think you need Alien Artifacts and Network Nodes to win the tech race.

All computer game AIs are crap. Every one of them I've encountered consistantly does stupid things that SP players learn to take advantage of and thus 'win' the game. Even weak humans stop making that same mistake over and over (at some point . So the multiplayer aspect also stands out.

The only thing I'd put SMAC 'on trial' for is the crummy multiplayer support. Prior to SMAC, many games had master servers designed to provide a list of available servers and games, but those abilities were left out. PBEM games are for Rip Van Winkle.



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- turn complete -

[Sikander]

I played Civ1 hard for years, until I eventually got bored and let it alone for quite awhile. I picked up Civ MGE eventually, but was somewhat disappointed that it was almost the same game, though the bug fixes and AI play were much improved. I could still beat the crap out of it immediately, and it didn't remain on my A list for very long. (In fact it remained a distant 3rd to two other CIV type games MOO2 and MOM). SMAC was different enough that I have been playing it for a year and a half with only one three month hiatus. IMO it is a much better game compared to CIV2 than CIV2 was compared to CIV1.

As far as historical gaming vs sci fi are concerned I am a total history nut, with history accounting for about 90% of my reading over the last couple of decades. I also like sci fi, but not nearly as much as history. Another of my favorite hobbies since 1974 is wargaming. It is the game systems in SMAC which make it a better game than CIV2 for me, and like other posters here I actually prefer historical gaming to sci fi gaming.

What keeps SMAC interesting are all of the different approaches that can be used to play the game. Different factions, different SE settings, different strategies. Both games are weak when viewed as solely wargames. They utilize wargame technology from the 1950s and the dawn of commercial board wargaming, with their square grids, rigid zones of control, and very simple comparison combat resolution. Hell, both of these games still penalize stacking (concentration of forces), which even the oldest wargames did not. As wargames both SMAC and CIV suck, quite frankly. But these are not wargames, but strategy games in the truest sense, and as such they are quite good and still are amongst the best ever produced.

What tends to turn me off a bit about the CIV2 forums is the flavor of orthodoxy which some of the posters there exude. I find that SMAC posters are much more likely to have an open mind to CIV than vice versa (making a huge generalization). Yes CIV was a milestone game which captured the imaginations of thousands of people. But the game had a lot of weaknesses as well, and there is enormous room for improvements to the system, which in my mind SMAC proved without that being it's intention. I certainly hope that CIV3 is a great game, but I fear that what so many fans want is CIV2 with new graphics, and that Fireaxis is likely to give them (and us) exactly that. (What could be easier?) I will be careful before I purchase CIV3 that it indeed breaks some important new ground in it's game systems. It won't be worth more than 5$ to me otherwise.