Let's talk about what's wrong with Alpha Centauri

Alpha Centauri is a ~14 year old game by Firaxis that some people (including me) consider the best Firaxis game ever made. News about Civ: Beyond Earth has got me thinking about it and then playing it again.

That said, I wanted to talk about a few aspects of it that I feel are broken. This isn't nostalgia dissipating because I only started playing the game when it was already 6 years old or so and I've pretty much always found parts of it a little broken.

1) Forests give you an ecology bonus, 1 food, 1 energy, and 2 minerals, even when they're planted on a desert tile. They also grow on their own, and they scale into late game with building upgrades. I feel that forests are just unreasonably good. They probably shouldn't give you 2 minerals. I think 1/1/1 would be fair given they work like that almost anywhere and grow on their own.

Since we're terraforming maybe it DOES make sense that most of your tiles would become earth plants.... is this intentional maybe? I still think they're too much of a no-brainer either way. Unless you're role playing a Captain Planet bad guy, why would you not mostly build forests?

2) Supply crawlers. These should really be capped at convoying ONE unit of any resource, max, to your city. Otherwise you can just build more workers by making them, basically. That or some other debuff.


3) The Hunter Seeker Algorithm. I mostly play University, and when you get this baby, your faction loses its major disadvantage completely. Yeah I know you can block them from it, but there is no other faction + secret project combo this good.


Any other SMAC fans who feel the same way about these things?

Still my favorite civ game but these aspects of it bug me.

1. Forests are good at making useless terrain useful. They still can't touch the Gaian mega-cheese combo of nothing but fungus and boreholes.

2. Yes, they are powerful. The problem is that if your neighbor is someone like Yang or Santiago cranking out military units while you are busy with supply crawlers. Then they roll in with their maintenance free (from high supply rating) troops coming from drone-free bases (from high police rating) and take over your beautiful bases. Supply crawlers are powerful, but not always the best way to go.

3. Get SMAX. You haven't played SMAC if you haven't played SMAX. Hunter-Seeker Algorithm is no longer a 100% probe defense.

If you really like Alpha Centauri, you need Alien Crossfire.

You know, I got it and never installed it. Still in its box.

Very good game, really addictive. If you don't care about the graphics it really worth your time. There are some balance issues, but it comes down to this, everything that the Total war series isn't very good at Alpha Centauri delivers. Diplomacy, building, researching, and all factions are fun to play