Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

"SMAC" redirects here. For other uses, see SMAC (disambiguation).

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
Developer(s)	Firaxis Games
Publisher(s)	Aspyr (Mac OS) Electronic Arts (Windows) Loki Software (Linux)
Designer(s)	Brian Reynolds Sid Meier Timothy Train Douglas Kaufman Bing Gordon
Engine	JACKAL
Platform(s)	Linux (Alpha/PowerPC/x86), Mac OS, Windows
Release	(Win) (Mac) (Linux 2.2) April, 2001
Genre(s)	Turn-based strategy (4X)
Mode(s)	Single player; multiplayer (over IPX, TCP/IP or modem)

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (SMAC) is a 4X turn-based strategic computer game created by Brian Reynolds and Sid Meier at Firaxis Games in 1999, simulating the colonization of the planet "Chiron" ("Planet") in the Alpha Centauri star system and continuing the story of Meier and Reynolds' earlier titles, Civilization and Civilization II. It was followed by an expansion pack, Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire (SMAX).

Brendan Casey released Version 1.0 of the Unofficial SMAC/X Patch, which fixes some bugs in Alpha Centauri on May 7, 2010. His project began in February 2009 at Apolyton's Alpha Centauri site and moved in June 2009 to the Civilization Gaming Network, where he will continue developing further versions of the patch.

Many game reviewers honored SMAC. In 1999, the magazine PC Gamer US awarded Alpha Centauri a score of 98% (at that time, the highest score ever given -- Civilization II received 97%) , the Editor's choice award and the Turn-based strategy game of the year award in 1999. SMAC also won several Game of the Year awards, including those from The Denver Post and Toronto Sun. It won Turn-based Strategy Game of the year award from GameSpot as well. The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences named Alpha Centauri best strategy game of the year. In 2000 Alpha Centauri won the Origins Award for Best Strategy Computer Game of 1999.

Storyline

The storyline for Alpha Centauri picks up with the Civilization space-race victory. Unlike the Civilization games, Alpha Centauri develops a complex storyline of its own, using the starting video, videos for completed secret projects, explanations of new technologies, and in cut-scenes.

In Alpha Centauri, Earth launched the "Unity," a colonization starship, to "Chiron" (or "Planet"), a planet in the Alpha Centauri system. Unfortunately, forty years into the journey, the Unity suffers a core malfunction, Captain Garland is assassinated and the ship breaks apart.

The crew splits into factions and escapes in seven escape pods. As Unity breaks up in high orbit, supply pods are scattered onto Planet. After the colony pods land, the player takes control of a faction with the goal of achieving dominance over the other six factions. Dominance can take many forms: military, population, economic and "transcendence."

The player soon discovers that "Planet" is a semi-dormant sentient hive organism, producing mindworms, Isles of the Deep, Locusts of Chiron and xenofungus to thwart the player's efforts to survive. The player also discovers remnants of an advanced alien species that have left behind mysterious monoliths and artifacts.

As time passes, "Planet" starts waking up and intruding on the player's dreams, eventually giving a player the chance to "transcend" or join "Planet" through technological research and the construction of the massive project, "The Ascent to Transcendence."

Factions

Original

Spartan Federation

True to its namesake, the militaristic Spartan faction places the highest priority on strength, discipline and combat readiness. Colonel Corazón Santiago, a survivalist from Puerto Rico, and a UNS Unity Security officer, leads the faction, and led the initial mutiny aboard ship.

Gaia's Stepdaughters

The Gaians are a faction that values living in ecological harmony with Planet and abhors ecological destruction, particularly after the way humanity left Earth. They are led by Lady Deirdre Skye (Unity officer in charge of hydroponics) of Free Scotland.

University of Planet

A technocratic faction that values knowledge and scientific advancement above all else, including ethics. The University is led by Academician Prokhor Zakharov of Russia (possibly named in tribute to physicist–politician Andrei Sakharov; the character's name was changed from Saratov early in development), Unity's chief science officer.

Peacekeeping Forces

This faction works hard to keep the peace through diplomacy and maintaining the United Nations charter. They are led by Commissioner Pravin Lal of India, the UNS Unity's Chief Medical Officer. The United Nations-style bureaucracy of the faction causes them to have a negative efficiency rating, but the Peacekeepers attract intellectual elites.

Human Hive

A totalitarian faction based on Chinese Legalist philosophy, they are controlled by Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang of Great China, the former Executive Officer (second-in-command) for the Unity mission, who tends to see his people as only being of value if they contribute to the growth of society.

During development, this faction was named "The Labyrinth" and had a stronger scientific inclination, before being changed to "The Hive" in the final release; however, one of their bases is still called The Labyrinth. In the pre-release version of the game, the Hive's belief in the greater good greatly raised the morale of Yang's army; however, this is not present in the final version of SMAC or the SMAX expansion pack.

Lord's Believers

A fundamentalist faction wary of secular technology, led by Sister Miriam Godwinson (Unity's chaplain) from the Christian States of America. While the game was being coded, this faction was named "The Conclave" before being changed to "The Believers" in the final release.

Morgan Industries

A corporate capitalistic faction, led by self-made mogul and diamond tycoon Nwabudike Morgan (whose company funded the Unity mission, and had a secret, private sleeping pod installed on the ship for him) of Namibia.

Morganites can easily make astronomical profits with the right social engineering, but cannot effectively maintain a large army due to their support penalties (at least not until the invention of clean reactors, which erase support costs for military units using them).

Alien Crossfire expansion

Cult of Planet

Fanatical worshipers of Planet. Led by Prophet Cha Dawn, who is believed to be a physical manifestation of the "Voice of Planet".

Cybernetic Consciousness

A race of cyborgs (in fact, "Cyborgs" is a common nickname for this faction) led by Aki-Zeta 5 (Prime Function Shell), formerly Aki Luttinen of Norway.

Data Angels

Hackers and crackers, experts at espionage activity. Their leader is Datajack Sinder Roze of Trinidad.

Free Drones

An industrial, socialist civilization that promises to be heaven to all workers, led by Foreman Domai of Australia.

Nautilus Pirates

A seafaring civilization, led by Captain Ulrik Svensgaard, of Gloucester, MA, USA [1].

Manifold Caretakers

A Progenitor (alien) race that seeks to protect the Sixth Manifold (Chiron) and to prevent the process of transcendence. They are led by Guardian Lular H'minee.

Manifold Usurpers

A Progenitor (alien) race that seeks to exploit the power of the Sixth Manifold by forcing the process of transcendence. Their leader is Conqueror Judaa Maar.

Gameplay

Alpha Centauri: Alien Crossfire screenshot

Within the game, the player assumes the role of one of seven distinctly different faction leaders and attempts to expand their colony and achieve victory. Players engage themselves in a race against the other factions, and are free to adopt any number of strategies in pursuit of their goal. Scientific discoveries within the game determine what technologies are available to particular factions, which in turn determines what facilities and units they can build at their colony bases. Players have divergent agendas instead of simple economic dominance or military conquest found in most games of the genre.

Alpha Centauri is open-ended and has multiple, customizable parameters for victory. The player can choose to work toward a victory based on diplomacy, economics, conquest, or transcendence.

The Datalinks

The Datalinks, similar to Civilization's Civilopedia, contain information crucial to playing the game. One of the most important features is the tech tree, which shows a complete system of all technologies available in the game, along with prerequisite technologies and all benefits the technology gives (new weapons, armor or special ability types, along with new base facilities, secret projects or social engineering choices) In all technology trades the game allows consulting the Datalinks to find exactly what is being offered (or demanded).

In addition, the Datalinks store the quotes involved with all technologies and secret projects. Many Alpha Centauri fans enjoy the quotes in particular and the thought behind them. The game's creators developed the personality and ideology of all the faction leaders through these quotes, as well as thoughts on human psychology. For instance, the Virtual World secret project is accompanied by Chairman Yang's view that reality is only what one perceives it to be, while Provost Zakharov denounces the general simplistic views on genetics when such technologies are discovered.

Tying the imaginary technology of the Datalinks into real intellectual history are quotes from Plato, Machiavelli, Immanuel Kant, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Dickens, Sir Thomas More, Albert Einstein, Saint Augustine, Aristotle, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sun Tzu, Lao Tzu, Herman Melville, Jules Verne, John Milton, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Søren Kierkegaard interspersed among those from the game's characters, as well as references to traditional songs and sayings from Earth.

Terrain

The game is represented on an isometric map of the planet surface, upon which bases are built and units deployed. Local features of the terrain influence the amount of resources a base harvests from any particular square. For example, rocky squares yield minerals but no food unless cleared, while river squares produce extra energy. The altitude of terrain influences how much energy can be harvested there, can create rain shadows downwind, etc. Terrain can be enhanced and altered (including raising and lowering altitude) by units equipped with a terraformer module. The terrain also affects combat. For example, defending units receive a +50% bonus in rocky squares, while artillery units receive bonuses when attacking from higher elevation.

There are also several "landmarks" that are featured on the standard maps and generated on the random maps. These landmarks include The Garland Crater, Mount Planet, Pholus Ridge, The New Sargasso, and The Ruins. Many of these are good locations to build bases at due to their resource output, but others, such as the New Sargasso (Sea) result in negative effects, as it is filled with native life. Additionally there are numerous features named on the standard maps such as Eurytion Bay which improve the feel of the maps but have no effect on gameplay.

There is also the Unique ability to allow a player to name areas on the map. However, like a few of the random features on the map, these names have no real ingame impact.

Units and combat

A unit is made up from different components such as chassis, weapon, armor, reactor, and special ability slots. Unlike the Civilization series proper, units come in default designs but can also be customized by the player. As new technologies become available, old designs may be brought up to date and existing units upgraded. The first of a new type of unit is considered a prototype and generally cost 50% more than the normal production model will.

Generally, only friendly units (the player's own or those of a pact ally) can occupy the same square. Enemy units must be eliminated (or, in some cases, forced to withdraw) in order to move into their square. Combat is usually initiated when a unit belonging to one faction attempts to enter a square occupied by a unit/units of a hostile faction. Many factors affect the outcome of combat, including:

• The attacking unit's weapon rating;
• The defending unit's armor rating;
• The hit points of both units, capped by the type of reactor used;
• The morale status of both units;
• Any attack or defense modifiers brought about by base facilities, Secret Projects, faction abilities, unit special abilities and terrain effects.

Researching certain new technologies unlocks progressively better equipment. Possessing certain support infrastructure (such as Command Centers), creating units with certain special abilities (such as High Morale), and having a positive morale rating in social engineering will all confer morale bonuses to new units, effectively enhancing their strength multiplier; conversely, a negative morale rating will incur morale penalties on new units. Also, gaining access to the mysterious alien monoliths that dot the planet, or defeating enough enemies to gain experience, will upgrade an existing unit's morale.

Psionic combat ignores conventional components and circumstances, focusing instead on morale, and gives a bonus to the attacker if the combat takes place on land. It is resolved normally. Native life forms fight psionically, and some components enhance a unit's psionic ability or permit it to make psionic attacks. It is also possible to cultivate native life forms under a player's control. Here the equivalent of morale is determined by ecological status and breeding techniques, rather than infrastructure. Psi combat also takes priority over regular combat, so that if either attacker or defender is psi-capable then psi combat occurs in place of regular combat. Attacks that occur from a distance, such as missile strikes and artillery or naval bombardments, are an exception to this priority.

There are a number of different unit types on land, sea and air, each with specific special properties and movement speeds. Air units are not initially available and require considerable technical development. Conventional missiles are a special type of single-use unit. Planetbuster missiles blast holes in continents, but provoke extreme global warming, a frenzied assault from native life, and being declared hostis humani generis by all other factions.

Native life

Adding to the trouble of the human factions is a pinkish-red indigenous semi-sentient fungus (xenofungus) that spans the planet. Concentrations of it can spawn more aggressive native life forms, the most basic of which are known as mind worms. Mind worms and other native life act as the planet's immune system, reacting to heavy industrial pollution by attacking offending cities and installations. On the flip side, mind worms can be captured by factions with a deep understanding of Planet's fragile ecology and used as instruments of war and police.

Also, in addition to native life there are certain structures dotted across the map called monoliths. These monoliths will upgrade and heal units. Within many maps there is a ring of monoliths that fills all the squares in a 3x3 section of the map except the middle square with monoliths. These are called The Ruins by the game.

In the course of the storyline, it is discovered that all xenofungus collectively forms a massive neural network, making the entire ecosystem a colossal group mind. It grows increasingly intelligent as the game progresses, even beginning communications with faction leaders in cut-scenes from time to time. The "Planetmind" is suspicious of humans and will defend itself if necessary. Faction leader quotes scattered throughout the game reveal that all of them, with the notable exception of Lady Deirdre—the first leader to have a conversation with the Planetmind—consider the emerging mind to be highly dangerous. This is due to the fact that the final growth stage is self-destructive, and will take humanity with it. However, the Transcendence victory condition allows the player to unite human consciousness with the Planetmind, helping it avoid self-destruction and propelling humanity to a new plane of existence.

Bases

Bases, like cities in Civilization, produce units, technological research and economic income. A base can also build facilities and secret projects. Facilities, analogous to buildings in Civilization, affect the operation of the base they are located in. Secret Projects, comparable to the Great Wonders of the Civilization are expensive and can only be built once per game, but have dramatic benefits from free facilities to social engineering effects and special unit abilities.

Diplomacy

When two factions have established contact, they can engage in a variety of diplomatic actions. New technology, energy credits and bases can be bargained for, given away or demanded with the threat of force. Factions can sign treaties and pacts, declare war or ask for a temporary cessation of hostilities. Treaties lead to commerce between faction bases and an increase in income for both factions. Pacts allow units to enter allied-held territory and bases, and double the commerce modifier between the two factions. Computer controlled factions will remember past dealings, betrayals and atrocities, and will base their reactions (modified by the leader's personality) to the player's diplomatic overtures accordingly.

Once one human faction has made contact with all other human factions, it can choose to convene the Planetary Council and elect a Planetary Governor. Thereafter, factions can periodically convene the council (at most once every 20 years (turns) for each faction; the Planetary Governor only has to wait 10 years) to make proposals such as electing a new governor, salvaging the Unity fusion reactor core to gain a large amount of energy credits for each faction, lower sea levels via satellite shades or raise them by melting the polar ice caps, eliminate the ban on atrocities like weapons of mass destruction, killing civilians with gas or punishing rioters by nerve-stapling, or creating or repealing a global trade pact. With the exception of the Planetary Governor or Supreme Leader elections, each faction has one vote, with the governor holding veto power. In Planetary Governor or Supreme Leader elections, each faction casts a number of votes based on its total population and modifiers from faction ability and secret projects.

Society

Despite being set in the future, the problems of human society still plague the inhabitants of Chiron. Reflecting this are the existence of drones in the population. Drones represent the undereducated, discontent segments of society. When the number of drones overwhelms the number of well educated citizens, called Talents, a drone riot occurs. During a drone riot all productive activity within the base is suspended. If not stopped, prolonged drone riots will eventually escalate in severity until facilities are destroyed or, in extreme cases, the entire city defects to another faction.

Drone riots can be suppressed through the use of in-base military units as police. The amount of suppression allowed depends on the degree of tolerance the society, under current social engineering models, has for policing and on special police training the units may have. There also exists the temporary and more extreme solution of nerve stapling. This directly suppresses the violent tendencies of the population, preventing drone riots for a short period of time, but carrying it out is considered an atrocity and will negatively impact diplomatic interactions. As well, the base facility called Punishment Sphere, among other effects, eliminates all drones from a base's population; the secret project named The Telepathic Matrix, among other effects, does not eliminate drones but means they will never riot in any base of the player who controls it.

Social engineering

Social engineering is another decisive game element reflecting human nature. Political, economic, social and future society models may be chosen. Each choice has its benefits and drawbacks, shown in a technical manner in-game by altering listed values which reflect how a faction operates overall. For instance, a good "INDUSTRY" rating improves build speeds and a good "ECONOMY" rating increases a faction's wealth.

Social engineering plays an important role in game diplomacy with computer players. Players that presently utilize the social engineering preference of a particular faction may have improved diplomatic relations with that faction. However, if a player has made a different social engineering ideal in whatever area of society (government, economy, values, or future society) a computer player's social choice lies, diplomatic relations will become strained, sometimes leading to outright vendetta.

At the beginning of each game, each faction is designated a particular social engineering preference and a particular social engineering aversion. Computer players must use their social engineering preference as soon as it is available, while all players (regardless of whether they are human or computer) may not use their social engineering aversion. Normally, the preference and aversion reflect the apparent ideologies of the faction (e.g. the Gaians favor Green economics and abhor Free Market economics). However, the player has the option to randomize the social agendas of all computer players. If this option is selected, the social engineering aversion of the faction remains the same. Consequently, it is possible for any faction to have the same social engineering choice as a preference and an aversion. In such a case, the player will still support that particular social engineering choice in diplomatic relations but cannot use that particular choice.

Victory conditions

There are several victory methods available in Alpha Centauri. Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire adds one extra victory condition which is only available to the Progenitor factions.

Cooperative

A Cooperative victory is when a pact brother or pact sister wins the game. This option allows players to complete an 'allied' victory using most of the following methods.

Conquest

A victory by conquest occurs when all factions are annihilated or have surrendered to one player. If cooperative victory is enabled then there may be up to three pact siblings who can share the victory (excluding those who have surrendered).

Economic

When a player has enough energy reserves (roughly equal to what it would take to mind-control all the remaining cities on Planet), he or she can win the game through economic victory by cornering the global energy market. This takes 20 turns to achieve, and can be prevented if during this time the faction's headquarters falls to an enemy.

Diplomatic

A player achieves diplomatic victory by uniting the Planetary Council behind him or her. To do this, three conditions must be met.

1. The player must be playing a human faction.
2. The Progenitor (alien) factions must be eliminated (they cannot have 'sworn a pact to serve you'; they must have been completely eliminated).
3. The player must get a percentage of the votes, by population, at Planetary Council. The percentage varies based on difficulty level up to 75% at maximum (transcend).

In order to initiate a diplomatic victory, one must have discovered Mind-Machine Interface.

Transcendence

The transcendence victory is achieved by building the Ascent to Transcendence secret project, which becomes available after the Voice of Planet secret project has been built (by any faction). This concept of a post human era is very closely related to the idea of the technological singularity. After this project is built people leave their material bodies to merge with the emerged planet intelligence.

Progenitor Victory

Only the Progenitor factions can win with this victory condition. The player must construct the Resonance Communicator. The Resonance Communicator is a combination of six Subspace Generators. In order for a Subspace Generator to be activated it must be at a base size ten or larger. The Resonance Communicator is used to call the Progenitors' home fleet, which is much more powerful than all the human and the other Progenitor factions combined, so the player wins the game. Even if Cooperative victory is enabled, only the faction that built the Resonance Communicator is considered to have won.

Modification

The editable nature of the game allows for a large degree of customization and has led to the creation of a number of mods and custom factions which other users can download to expand the gameplay. A number of sites have sprung up to support and distribute these files and to support the modding community.

Production

Development

Inspirations

According to the game's designer, much inspiration for the game came from "classic works of science fiction". Reynolds cites Frank Herbert's novel The Jesus Incident as a clear inspiration. The native life and singular planet mind of the game draws heavily from this book. The concept of presenting quotes with every achievement also comes from The Jesus Incident.

Chiron (the name of the planet) is the name of the only non-barbaric centaur in Greek mythology and an important loregiver and teacher for humanity. It also is an homage to James P. Hogan's 1982 space opera novel Voyage from Yesteryear, where a human colony is artificially created at Alpha Centauri by automatic probe on a planet later named by colonists as Chiron. Chiron in the game has two moons, named after the centaurs Nessus and Pholus, with the combined tidal force of Earth's Moon, and is the second planet out from Alpha Centauri A, the innermost planet being the Mercury-like planet named after the centaur Eurytion. Alpha Centauri B is also dubbed Hercules, a reference to him killing several centaurs in mythology, and the second star preventing the formation of larger planets.

The arrival on Chiron is referred to as "Planetfall", which is a term used in many science fiction novels, including Robert A. Heinlein's Future History series, and Infocom's celebrated comic interactive fiction adventure Planetfall. Vernor Vinge's concept of technological singularity is the origin of the Transcendence concept.

The game's cutscenes use montages of live-action video, CGI, or both; most of the former is from the 1992 experimental documentary Baraka.

Technology

Alpha Centauri employed (isometric) 3-D rendering for both the terrain and units. This was made possible by the "Caviar" voxel library by AnimaTek International (now Digital Element), which renders the voxel models and terrain geometry using self-modifying assembly language routines.

The AI features adaptability and behavioral subtlety.

Reception

Alpha Centauri has been described as "Sim City meets Dune". The magazine PC Gamer US awarded Alpha Centauri a score of 98% in its April 1999 issue, which was the highest score ever given by that magazine—Civilization II being the previous holder of this record with 97%. Later, PC Gamer also gave Half-Life 2 and Crysis scores of 98% in 2004 and 2007, respectively. The magazine also gave Alpha Centauri Editor's Choice and Turn-Based Strategy Game of the Year awards in 1999.

Alpha Centauri has also won several Game of the Year awards, including those from The Denver Post and Toronto Sun. It won Turn-based Strategy Game of the year award from GameSpot as well. The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences named Alpha Centauri best strategy game of the year. In 2000 Alpha Centauri won the Origins Award for Best Strategy Computer Game of 1999.

The video game review aggregator websites Game Rankings and Metacritic, which collect data from numerous review websites, gave it scores of 92% and 89%.

Awards

• Gamespot 1999 Turn-Based Game of the Year
• Highest rated game ever - PC Gamer
• Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences "PC Strategy Game of the Year"
• PC Gamer "Editors' Choice"
• Maximum PC "KICK ASS" Award
• UGO "E3 Best of Show"
• CGW "Strategy Game of the Year" Nominee
• GameSpy "Strategy Game of the Year" Nominee
• GamePower "Game of the Year" Hon. Mention
• ImaginaryLife.com "Best of the Best"
• Denver Post - Best Game of 1999
• Toronto Sun - "Best Games of 1999"
• Game Industry News - Best Game Soundtrack 1999

Alien Crossfire Expansion

Main article: Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire

Alien Crossfire was the expansion for Alpha Centauri, featuring seven new factions (two of which are non-human), new technologies, new facilities, new secret projects, new alien life forms, new unit special abilities, new victory conditions (including the new Progenitor Victory) and several additional new concepts and strategies. The game initially had a single production run.

Alien Crossfire introduced an alien race called the Progenitors, the original creators of the ecosystem of Chiron. The Progenitors experimented in achieving sentience on a planetary level. However, a disaster destroyed most of the Progenitors' civilization. The scattered survivors regrouped into two factions: the Caretakers, who believed in future research into planetary-level sentience, and the Usurpers, who believed in the Transcendence of their species to the next stage of evolution.

Both factions end up crash-landing on Chiron, losing almost all of their technology. Their civil war continues, with both factions anticipating the day when it can build a Resonance Communicator, allowing it to summon the bulk of its forces to Chiron.

Fiction

The original story of the journey and splintering of the colonization space ship from Earth to Alpha Centauri was detailed in multiple installments that were released periodically by Michael Ely of Firaxis on the web, immediately prior to the release of the game, for marketing purposes. During the course of the installments, the names of regular forum members on the official Firaxis forums were incorporated into the story in cameos. The resulting short story Journey to Centauri can be downloaded from the official website. A second short story, Arrival, introducing the Alien Crossfire factions, is also downloadable from that site.

For further reading, game story developer Michael Ely has also written a trilogy of novels based on the game. Each of these novels is loosely based on one of the three "Faction vs. Faction" scenarios included with the game: Peacekeepers vs. Spartans, Gaians vs. Morganites, and Believers vs. University, respectively.

• Ely, Michael (2000). Centauri Dawn. New York, NY: Pocket Books. ISBN 0-671-04077-4.
• Ely, Michael (2001). Dragon Sun. New York, NY: Pocket Books. ISBN 0-671-04078-2.
• Ely, Michael (2002). Twilight of the Mind. New York, NY: Pocket Books. ISBN 0-671-04079-0.

There is also a graphic novel Alpha Centauri: Power of the Mindworms written by Steve Darnell and illustrated by Rafael Kayanan.

Legacy

While not being a direct sequel of Civilization II, Alpha Centauri was considered a spiritual successor of that much-acclaimed game, because it had the same general principles and was made by many of the original developers. At the time, the future of the Civilization franchise was in dispute since Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds had left Microprose to found Firaxis. Unable to make Civilization III, the two made Alpha Centauri instead, beginning the game where the storyline had left off in Civilization, with mankind leaving Earth to travel to Alpha Centauri. Alpha Centauri was also built on the Civilization II engine modified for voxel graphics.

In the community of Civilization players, many quotations from Alpha Centauri, which are shown at different points in the gameplay, are also quite popular. Civilization III was considered by some gamers to be inferior to Alpha Centauri.

The game has also sparked a trilogy of novels and a strategy guide by Chris Hartpence, which was later printed and published. Steve Jackson Games also published GURPS Alpha Centauri, a sourcebook for the GURPS role-playing game set in the Alpha Centauri universe.

Many gameplay features which made their debut in Alpha Centauri would be implemented in later games in the Civilization series, such as enhanced diplomatic options (including the ability to loan money to other players and to make other players become vassals), an election-based UN-like system for enacting laws affecting all players, and the ability to fine-tune a faction's governmental structures by varying separate aspects of their governance.

Availability

Pre-patched versions of Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossfire were later bundled together in the Alpha Centauri Planetary Pack. Electronic Arts included both Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossfire in some of its various compilation of older computer games, including the "laptop gamers" collection. Sold-Out Software re-released the game in 2000.

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is, as of the 21st June 2009, still available for purchase new from major retailers such as BestBuy and EB Games. However, unless the current owners of the game's copyright allow it to be sold (through a system such as Steam or Gamersgate), the game is currently unavailable for legal download.

The Linux version, ported by Loki Software, is no longer available for purchase from stores, and only sporadically available to purchase secondhand from sites such as Ebay and Amazon.com. Copies of the Linux version are rare and can sell for over US$100. The game can fail to run on some default configurations of modern Linux distributions created after 2004, although there are workarounds available that address this issue. Loki installers for linux gamers supplies an installer that allows the game to run on modern systems.

References

• McCubbin, Chris (1999). Sid Meier's Alpha Centuari (Game Manual). Firaxis Games.
• Tito, Greg (2005-10-04). "Alpha Centauri, The Final Frontier". The Escapist (13): 28–30. Retrieved 2007-02-28.

Further reading

• Aldrich, Clark (2004). Simulations and the Future of Learning: an Innovative (and perhaps revolutionary) Approach to E-Learning. John Wiley and Sons. ISBN 0787969621. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Boosts Electronic Arts' Results
• Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri - New life and new civilization for Linux

External links

• Official site
• Official Strategies - The Official Site no longer links to the Official Game Site. Although the main page of the Official Game Site is no longer available, its sections are. The Strategy section links to The Story (includes 44 episodes written by Michael Ely), Factions (includes official bios of the 14 leaders) and Native Life (includes original art from Firaxis).
• Apolyton Civilization Site AC Creation Forum - supports modding community.
• Apolyton Civilization Site's Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri section - includes, under "Files," factions, maps, modpacks and scenarios.
• Civ Fanatics Alpha Centauri Forums - features Comprehensive Datalinks Update.
• Civilization Gaming Network SMAC Academy - includes reference articles and navigation to mods and custom factions.
• Gamespot Presents Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Special - includes a diary by Brian Reynolds and a link to the Game Guide, which was co-produced by Sybex Books.
• WePlayCiv Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri section - provides guides, mods, maps, and other information.