SMAC popularity??

[Method]

Originally posted by dojoboy
Who lives for three hundred years.

the leaders in CIV do. and they only retire after 6000 years...

[Frankychan]

I think the genre now is those first person shooters. Maybe that's why AC's popularity has dropped somewhat.

I for one can't stand those shooter games...I get all sick and nauseated.

[Ned]

FChan, Re: First Person Shooters, have you tried Deus Ex? Now that, IMHO, is a great game. It is the "thinking man's" FPS. Ned

[MattyBoy]

This is a really good question, Bruce.

I prefer SMACX to CIV II, because I like:
- social engineering.
- different faction characteristics.
- obvious advances, like inefficiency/bureaucracry (for ICS), zones of control & build queues.
- design workshop.
- storyline (until it became routine and then I stopped noticing it).
- general look and feel / sound. That dispassionate "Drone Riots" kept me on the edge of my seat while I was learning to play.
- planet lifeforms that add so much more to the character of the game than do barbarians.

These last two points give the game an addictive edge that I never felt with civ II ( but did while I was first learning CIV I )


So, what turns people off SMAC?

Well, if everybody had given it a proper try, the worst change from CIV II to SMAC would have to be the supply crawlers. They are so powerful and the AI doesn't use them, so you know that you will eventually win (I only play SP) as long as you survive until Industrial Auto. Actually, I have banned myself from using supply anything now.

But, I think yavoon gave the real answer for SMAC's relative obscurity
(besides the fact that it was not called "CIV 3, Alpha Centauri")

1)its not historic, this is a huge selling point, even like non-historic things that just have swords and the like in em
sell better than sci fi. as is evident by all the "ITS NOT REALISTIC ENUFF" posts about civ3. lotsa ppl play the civ
series to recreate history. and they don't enjoy nething happening outside wut they can suspend disbelief about.

I am yearning for a true CIV game at the moment, because I have just been reading "Guns, Germs and Steel", which explains the history of the world since 11000 BC. When I hear how the Taiwanese invented triremes and began conquering island after island, it just makes me want to make some triremes myself...
...CIV 3 here we come.

[Evil Robot]

Originally posted by Ned
FChan, Re: First Person Shooters, have you tried Deus Ex? Now that, IMHO, is a great game. It is the "thinking man's" FPS. Ned

Yes, yes it is.

[Basilisk]

Originally posted by Evil Robot


Yes, yes it is.

Definately! If only that, (and CIV3 of course) would run on my machine...