hi, is AC really that great?

[Gnool]

I've played Civ2, Civ3 and SMAC, and SMAC is the best game of the lot by far. The first time I played Civ 2 I played it for 10 hours straight (starting at 9pm ), but SMAC is definately better. Lately I've been playing it heaps; I've started 3 games in the last 5 days (finishing them all except for my current game which I expect to finish tonight ). When I'm at school I say to myself "ahh this is boring, I wanna go play Alpha Centauri". I thought that eventually I'd get sick of doing the same thing over & over but you don't get sick of it for some reason. It's a great game, go buy it

[Lord Merciless]

I would rate SMAC as the best civ-type game only if the AI had just been a little bit better.

[Jac de Molay]

I can pretty much echo what's been said here. There's an incredible depth to this game that I 've haven't seen in game software since - pretty much why I 've stopped buying games lately and stuck to the classics SMAC and Civ 2.

The thing I like the most is the ability to roleplay with each faction. In times past, I was almost afraid of taking on the challenge of playing a faction who I opposed ideologically- Yang and the Hive comes to mind. But this past year, I've been developing different, unique strategies to take advantage of the various factions' attributes.

I would rate SMAC as the best civ-type game only if the AI had just been a little bit better

I would agree for the most part. But I still consider AI Yang to be a challenge in certain situations. The AI seems to take advantage of this faction's production abilities the most, with Miriam a distant second. Trouble could be around the corner if you're situated next to Yang in the early game.

Dave

[waab]

It is really great the story does much to the game, and SE is fun. The only thing I miss is CIV 3 trade table...

And See bases is fun and betiful :-)

[Crisler]

As an old school gamer that feels like he has seen it all, I can tell you that SMAC is one of the best games of all time, if not the best.

I have played tons of games in my day, Ieven go back to the pre-DOS days, programming our own games.

In that time only three games have not been removed from my HD (or to play stack) within 45 days of beginning. They are Total Annihilation, Star Fleet Command 2 and SMAC.

All three games require thought to play well and have awesome replayability.

E.L. Crisler

[Frankychan]

Hmmmm, well, I'll just try and say some reason's why SMAC is good.

Ideology. Unlike Civ, the faction you choose to start out with has inherent bonus' and detriments. For instance, if you like having an equality for all P.O.V., the Peacekeepers may be your cup of tea....but you may regret your decision. Whatever faction you choose to play should (in some way) reflect your own personal point of view.

Diplomatic relationships. Unlike Civ, you can have more interaction with different factions. If you don't like a certain faction, you can tell them whatever you want...with multiple choices to be selected.

These are just a few reasons why SMAC is tha best....but I'll let you decide.

I'm sure you'll make the right decision.

[alphaomega]

ive been playing for like an hour and wow I think im gonna like it. I dont really have that much idea of what im doing yet and it has a steep learning curve but im learning it though the Datalinks and manual and I definatly prefer this whole sci fi thing. I think it will take a long time to find a technological goal but I am already hooked.. I like the idea of framing other factions and moral levels. Just 2 minor things...
1. Do you get advisors like in the civ games? I looked but couldnt find anything other than Planetary Council which I cant get yet but isnt the same thing.
2. When I scroll around the screen its quite jerky. Its not a problem and dosent cause any slow down or anything but is this normal, I just wanted to check it wasnt just me? I have a 1ghz geforce 4 system with 256mb and everything up to date.

[Method]

Originally posted by alphaomega
1. Do you get advisors like in the civ games? I looked but couldnt find anything other than Planetary Council which I cant get yet but isnt the same thing.

do you mean advisors like as in civ2 high council? none of that, but you do the science summary screen, base production screens etc (F1-F8) if that's what you mean.

you need to have the comlink frequency of every faction before you can call a council (and if the AI calls a council you gain everyone's frequency). certain techs allow council proposals. with planetary economics, you can call for a global trade pact, or with advanced spaceflight, launch solar shade.

[The Bloody Baro]

I bought Civ3 before I bought SMAC and SMAC is STILL better. the variety, the factions, the ablity to create your own faction [assuming you have SMAX for the Facedit], Plus the leaders give you a real feeling of attacking for purpose. " Turn down my loan offer will ya! I'll kill you Yang!! " Than having them pitifuly surrender : : : : : : and decline so you can though a torture party around their punishment sphere!

[Pandemoniak]

TBB, the FacEdit is bugged, you'd better edit the .txt files

[Adalbertus]

I love SMAC despite of being a SciFi game. I like the flexibility in each aspect of the game: SE choices, Unit Workshop, Terraforming ... I like the fact that the factions really look different: A very good strategy for one faction would kill another. And last not least I like the Mind Worms. Originally I thought of them as a nuisance as the barbarians in Civ. But removing the barbarians in Civ doesn't change the game. Removing Mindworms deteriorates SMAC. And I adore the Book of Planet. I really would like to have a "historical SMAC".

[Gary]

Just in case I missed where someone covered it. Yes there is a year when the game officially ends. You can continue playing afterwards, but your score no longer increases.

[gdgrimm]

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned this one yet...

One of the most fascinating aspects of SMAX over the Civ games for me is the dual combat modes. SMAX has military units that fight in the usual Earth like way (i.e. biggest club wins) and a whole other range of military units that fight in a unique Planet like way (i.e. called Psi combat, kind of a telepathic thought method that causes people to imagine their skin boiling over with maggots and such). In Psi combat, the weopans used are irrelevant. The only thing that matters is how well trained the troops are (or how 'old' the native life form is).

And of course specific factions have specific strengths and weaknesses that help or hurt them in each combat mode.

I distinctly remember one game where I had fallen way behind the Data Angels (who are especially good at stealing technologies and buying up other peoples' troops and cities) in normal military technologies. In Civ II terms, it was like his Dragoons against my Phalanxes and my Elephants against his Musketeers. I really didn't stand a chance in that type of military combat.

But I was the Planet Cult (whom by their very nature get a 20% Psi attack bonus), who was following Green economics (which gives another 20% attack bonus to Psi attack), had control of the Manifold Nexus (geographic 'resource' which gives another 10% bonus to Psi attack), and had just finished growing/training a native life army (immune to the purchase abilities of the Data Angels probe teams) in a short war with the Believers (made especially short because their the worst faction at fighting Psi war).

End result was that my Planet Cult demon mind worm army sliced and diced the medium trained Data Angels. It was great fun!!

[Adalbertus]

gdgrimm,

I'm not surprised. Simply because there is so much more which makes the game unique. But you're right, it is one of the good aspects of the game. In Civ3 (as little as I played it) I got the impression to be forced a certain way. In SMAC/X, there are always two or three solutions to a given problem.

[Straybow]

Remember the nursery rhyme?

There once was a girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good
She was very, very good
When she was bad she was horrid!

While SMAC does have many truly innovative features and clever ideas listed here by others it still doesn't rise to the status of "great." It's detractions (not just "I wish this were a little different") are too many. I do play it, but often the games get boring to me. First, let's get two issues out of the way.

AO, you are correct. Whatever graphics engine they use is kludgy. When I first got the game it was unbearable on my old PII 300 64M w/generic 8M video. My present Athlon doesn't have a decent graphics card, but even with a super-duper system the graphics are still strangely sluggish (if you're using XP with less than 512M then you take another hit off the speed, but that isn't the graphics' fault).

Adalbertus, SMAC attack values are double the defense values at equivalent tech levels ("Impact" and above). Defensive bonuses are negligible (eg, +25% in base defends at 8:5 instead of 2:1). Bunker gives squat except against artillery. Probe actions favor the attacker, while psi attacks are normally 3:2. In other words, there is zero defensive strategy: attack, attack, attack. As though to make up for that flaw they took a step back in gameplay. Now aircraft and fast units can only attack once no matter how little damage they take.

These are secondary to the main complaints I have about the game. Ugh, what a (inter)face! Besides the gloomy, monotonous pallette there are too many irksome traits and little bugs to list any but the most annoying: Lack of organization. Start with the unit design workshop. It is a great idea, but try to find units in that clunky scrolling unit list with no organization whatsoever. Upgrading many units is agonizing. The next choice, pop-up review, keeps presenting unit designs that you have rejected or changed previously. The last option, auto-design w/o review, forces you to wade through the unorganized unit list to prune the ones you'll never use. I end up disabling it all rather than wrestle with the artificial idiot's suggestions. Aargh!

Sort by movement domain (land, air, sea) is a must; by chassis type and by Att/Def values a no-brainer. At least the unit build menu is a 2D grid and does a half-ass job by separating combat from noncombat units. Likewise there is no organization to the Military Command/Security Nexus. Can't sort by current/obsolete, can't hide unit types no longer in service, can't manage upgrades from the screen, and so on.

There are no organizational options for Base Ops screen. It can't display which bases have key improvements you might want to manage (which goes all the way back to Civ1, for those who remember). No grouping by geography, no classification types available (frontier, sea power, air power, etc). Can't sort by name, size, production, psych, etc.

When you click on a base from the Base Ops screen and then return to Base Ops it goes back to the top of the list and pgup/pgdn keys no longer work. I find both highly aggravating; I assume the latter is more of a bug rather than an intent of design. From a programming stance why isn't the state of the display preserved for return when the base screen is invoked? I'm baffled.

Also there are no organizational options for tech review. If I'm using blind research I want to review by category, but that's impossible. For the known tech list it shows category and level beside the name, but not in the datalinks.

Then the unit chassis types get me. Airplanes, submarines, aircraft carriers, rockets, turbojets, helicopters, hovercraft, hydrofoils, missiles… these have all been developed within a 100 year period which began with dreadfully primitive manufacturing capabilites. These colonists start out with all the general knowledge we've got, plus some, and they can't build a simple ship or airframe? THEY CAN'T EVEN BUILD A FRIGGIN' ATV? Talk about reinventing the wheel!

What, do hydraulics (displacement, drag, etc) work differently on Chiron? Does the airfoil work differently? They don't have to build a 100k ton supercarrier, just a simple ship. They don't have to build a Mach 2.5 marvel of technology, just something rugged and practical like the A-10, or even the prop-driven A-26 and C-130.

Does chemistry work differently on Chiron? If you read the appendix, Chiron is rich in reducing (anaerobic hydrogen-fixing) environments. We can make plastics and synthetic crude oil, with 1950's tech, from soy beans. How about methanol, or hydrogen? Basic propellants are the bottom rung of chemical engineering. It shouldn't take them decades to get there; if they can make boilers and pipes, they can refine various propellants from crops. Worry about process efficiency later.

Hovercraft is the most versatile form of transport; capable of sea, litoral, and inland operation (over unbroken ground). With Chiron's 75% greater air density a hovercraft would have better load/deadweight ratio than on Earth, and better rough terrain handling. You wouldn't need amphibious modifications for any troops or equipment being delivered to the shore by hovercraft (unless faced with sheer cliffs).

It's a no-brainer as the Chiron chassis of choice, but essentially doesn't exist in the game design. The foil chassis (seems Firaxis doesn't know the definition of either "airfoil" or "hydrofoil") is pictured as hovercraft, but allows slow sea-only movement. The "hovertank" chassis is land only.

Let's go back to some really basic transportation predating internal combustion by nearly a century: railroads. Why wait for maglev technology when it's entirely unnecessary? Cripes, GIVE ME RAILS!

That leads me to the other aspect of the unit design and construction model that bugs me. While the colonists begin with a basic understanding that all these chassis types are possible they lack the manpower to build them. Infrastructure and industry are the obstacles, not theory. They don't need to reinvent the wheel, they need to reinvent mass production. A base should need to build fabrication facilities by fundamental chassis type: land, sea, fixed wing, rotary wing, etc. Instead the facilities are optional and only affect the training level of the units.

In a nutshell, transportation technology is delayed in categories where it ought not be delayed at all, and excessively delayed by nonsensical tech barriers where some delay might be expected, yet unaffected by the limited human resources set forth in the premise of the game itself.

Then there's the whole energy-based economy model. C'mon. Energy Bank? A giant Duracell attached to a capacitor? Get real! Why is there any limit to energy if compact, efficient, and relatively non-polluting fission is available? Obviously there is no political squeemishness, given all the nuclear powered vessels around. No two forms of usable energy are interchangeable in value, which derives from the cost of making it available and demand for its use. If I need to recharge my cellphone and don't have a converter all the power plants in the world mean nothing.

Cashless economy is different from moneyless economy. Pure command economy does well while the colonies are small, and everybody needs a portion of everything. Von Mises proved that a "free" market system based on an exchangable currency (even if abstracted by perceived values in barter transactions) is necessary for any economy above subsistence level. But I digress. Money is the measure of economy, not energy; energy is a product, or rather a wide range of products from electrical power to IC fuels and propellants to reactor fuels.

On to other things. There is nothing between 7.62mm small arms and the high tech weapons in the game. Maybe the colonists were originally only equipped with small arms, OK. But once they start designing and producing their own there's no limit. What about heavy infantry weapons like mortars, machine guns, RPGs, LAWs, wire guided AT missiles, and shoulder-launched AA missiles that we have now?

There is nothing beyond hand weapons. How about tanks and field artillery? No, not imaginary "artillery" with 200+ km (2 tile) range (the "bombardment" model is a joke), tactical heavy weapons that are the backbone of ground forces. SMAC has the same weapons in vehicles that the infantry carry. No firepower differential, exactly the same. Ships are limited to small arms too; how the hell do you attack a 10k+ ton ship with these things? ("If we fire enough 15mm rounds maybe the weight of the lead will sink her, sir.") I guess they forgot how to make bombs for aircraft, too… I could go on.

Then the ridiculous stuff. How do you make laser/energy weapon "artillery?" That is, how do you "bombard" from over the horizon, or to bypass line-of-sight defenses, with a line-of-sight weapon? Carrier deck and pressure hull as "special abilities" instead of separate chassis types? Training is a "special ability" of the vessel, not the crew? I picture normal crew compartments being unable to accomodate their enlarged brains.

"Special abilities" limited to 2 on units? Isn't that really the definition of second rate weapons systems? "Sorry, sir, we can't change the armaments on these strike aircraft for the air superiority role. Yes, I know we have a whole year to complete the mission. Why don't we just build new planes instead?" I guess 20th century multirole aircraft are just figments of our collective imagination.

Spearhead units that make or break a military force today are highly evolved from the old single-role model. Modern combat aircraft have long distance sensors of many types, ECM that rocks, surface and air attack weaponry (except for dedicated strategic bombers, another matter entirely); basically every combat "special" on the list except for amphib/drop "pods" (let's not go there either).

Heck, militia units can be equipped with aforementioned shoulder launched AA and AT weapons with minimal training—mujahedeen vs. Soviets taught that lesson. That's equivalent to Comm Jammer (+ vs ground vehicles) and AAA abilities, available cheaply even for noncombat units. Defense isn't defined by what materials you strap around your body; armor is useless without a weapon to deter the enemy's attacks from testing the armor. Mystical armor materials themselves… please, don't even get me started.

It's the stupidity, stupid!