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NatesLog's Alpha Centauri (PC)
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| [February 5, 2012 08:39:19 PM]
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Here is the continuation of the story from my first Alpha Centauri gamelog:
As promised, now I shall discuss secret projects. These are much like the Wonders of the World in the Civilization games; once a secret project is completed by an empire, no other empire may build the same project. Secret projects confer special benefits to the faction that builds them, some of which are more important than others. For example, there is one secret project, named the Supercollider, which doubles research at the base at which it is built. Another project, which we will encounter later in the gamelog, is called the Neural Amplifier and boosts the psi defense of all a faction’s units. There are quite a few other secret projects, many of which can easily tip the balance of a game.
Now, back to my account of my gameplay experience:
As you may recall, I was fighting a war against CEO Nwabudike Morgan, using my mind worms against his conventional units. I had also recently met several of the other faction leaders, including Chairman Sheng-ji Yang of the Hive, who I resolved to defeat, one way or another. This, then, takes off from that point.
After my initial difficulty conquering Morgan’s territory, I finally take a city on the edge of his domain. By this time, I have a rather large number of mind worms swarming into the area, and the other nearby cities also fall quickly. This helps me in several ways. First, and most obvious, conquering Morgan’s cities means that he has fewer cities at which to build or buy troops, limiting the number of units he can produce per turn. This also means that I can start training my own military units at my newly conquered cities. Second, each time I conquer one of Morgan’s cities, I get to steal one of the technologies that he has researched and which I do not possess. As a result, several of Morgan’s other cities fall to me, one after the other. Finally, I send my troops to his capitol and take it, with surprisingly little trouble.
At this point, Morgan is no longer a significant threat to me. He still has a couple of cities and a fair number of military units, but my cities now surround his on all sides. When Morgan again begs for a cease fire, I accept it, wanting to concentrate on preparing for a war with some of the other factions, namely the Hive.
Shortly after signing the ceasefire with Morgan, Yang (of the Hive) contacts me and demands several key technologies from me in return for letting me live. I refuse, and he declares war on me. Fortunately, Yang is already at war with just about every other faction (Including, as I later find out, Morgan). Unfortunately, most of Yang’s bases are on an entirely different continent, which means that if I want to get to him, I’m going to have to build boats, and, if I want to be even mildly effective, I’m going to have build lots of strong, defensible boats.
I never do get around to properly building my boat army. Before I have a chance to build more than one or two cheap transport ships, Yang has conquered one of Morgan’s cities, right there on my continent. Sensing an easy way to strike back at Yang without building large numbers of boats, I gather up all my mindworms that aren’t in defensive positions. With this rather impressive force, I attack Yang’s newly conquered city. Unfortunately for me, I had neglected to consider several facts before I attacked. First, all of Yang’s bases, whether built by Yang or conquered from someone else, contain the Perimeter Defense structure. This structure doubles the defensive power of all units within a base. Second, Yang owns the Neural Amplifier secret project, which increases his defense against psi attack by half. Taken together, these two factors make a significant difference in the effectiveness of my units. As a result, my attack fails miserably and does not manage to kill even one unit within Yang’s base.
After my failed attack, while I am outgunned in just about every way imaginable, I continue to try to beat Yang, lost cause though it may be. Instead of attacking his units inside their bases, I wait until they leave to attack them. This goes much better for me, though my units still take heavy losses.
And then Yang defeats Morgan. As unflattering as it is, Yang clearly had not been devoting a great deal of attention to fighting me; once Morgan goes down, Yang becomes much more aggressive against me. I find out, the hard way, that Yang could build air units. Like their analogues in reality, these air units move long distances quickly, do devastating damage, and then disappear like smoke on the wind. While my psi units are better equipped to deal with Yang’s jets than most other units would be, even they don’t really stand a chance. My armies, already spread thin by my aggression, cave in rather quickly under the combined might of Yang’s ground and air units. After my last city falls to Yang’s forces, a cinematic sequence plays in which I hear my faction leader screaming as he is interrogated by the Hive, and the game ends.
Reflections:
Even after this exploration of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, there is still much more to discuss. This gamelog reflects a single playthrough of only one of the six SMAC factions and, even then, is only a very basic overview. The depth of play in this game is deeply impressive. However, there are also other important elements that this gamelog did not discuss. The various sounds throughout the game serve to both immerse the player into the gameworld and to inform the player of what is happening. Quotes from the various faction leaders and from various famous people also help provide background, immersion, and something of a personal feel to various elements of the game. The game’s cinematic sequences, while made with hugely outdated and graphically unimpressive technology, still remain impressive. (If you’re interested in an example, you can search youtube for “Alpha Centauri Self Aware Colony.”) Of course, one of the reasons why these quotes and cinematic sequences are so effective is that they build on the faction leaders’ established personalities and tell a story about how each faction chooses to cope with the challenges of surviving on Alpha Centauri. These two attributes, depth of play and personal story, and the quality with which they are executed are a large part of what makes Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri so compelling.
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| [February 5, 2012 08:38:51 PM]
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First, here is a brief summary of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri:
Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (SMAC) is an oft-overlooked game. SMAC deals with creating your own empire by building cities and military units, exploring, researching new technologies, and dealing with other empires. SMAC does all this in much the same way Civilization II does. However, SMAC also incorporates new elements into the classic Civilization mixture. For one, the game occurs on a distant planet and, as a result, most of the military units and technologies are the stuff of science fiction. Naturally, this means that there are some units that can do things that modern science has not yet discovered or explained. Also, unlike the early Civilization games, the player’s faction of choice has a massive impact on gameplay and strategy. Each faction has their own unique bonuses and deficiencies. For example, one faction’s military units are twice as effective when attacking, but that same faction also has vastly reduced research capabilities. Additionally, as the player advances through the technology tree, he or she can select one of several “social engineering” choices in the areas of politics, economics, values, or future society. Like the initial faction choice at the beginning of the game, social engineering choices have upsides and downsides. As an example, free market is one of the social engineering choices in economics; it increases the monetary and scientific production of an empire, but also increases ecological disruption and makes cities harder to control for that empire. Each of the game’s choices can be combined to give an empire a unique set of advantages and disadvantages, which further leads to a wide variety of effective play styles for SMAC. Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri stands among the best of the Civilization games and, certainly, provides the most depth of play within the series.
Now, here is my first SMAC gamelog:
So, I begin playing SMAC. At the start of the game, my first major choice is which of the six factions I want to play. I select the Gaians, a group of people who are defined by their ecological sensitivity. They choose to adapt to the native ecology of Alpha Centauri and look down on empires that choose to exploit or disrupt the native ecology. In terms of gameplay, playing as the Gaians gives me two advantages. First, the Gaians are more effective at training and capturing native lifeforms, called “mindworms.” When captured or trained, mindworms can be used like any other military unit; however, instead of traditional combat, they engage in psi combat which ignores all technology-based combat bonuses. Second, the Gaians are more effective than other empires at managing large numbers of cities. Since I fully intend to develop a massive empire, the Gaians seem like an ideal choice.
The game begins with my ship crash-landing on Alpha Centauri, on the edge of a small continent. This leaves me with one city and a couple of units with which to begin exploring the planet. I spend the next several turns building more military units to explore the continent and some economic units to build more cities and to improve the cities I already have.
All this is going swimmingly until I encounter CEO Nwabudike Morgan, leader of the Morganites. As his title implies, he is the leader of a faction that prioritizes wealth above all else. As a result, his cities tend to be both fabulously rich and poorly defended. I decide, then, that it would be a fantastic idea to separate Morgan from his money, and I immediately declare war on him. Unfortunately, for me, Morgan has a bigger and more technologically advanced military than I do and handily trounces all the (admittedly weak) units I send after him. Seeing the rough shape my army is in, I contact Morgan and request a truce, which he is quite willing to accept (for the right price, of course). I haven’t finished with Morgan yet, but my ambitions can wait until my military is strong enough to finish the job.
Shortly after signing the truce, I unlock the ability to train mindworms. As mentioned previously, mindworms ignore technological combat bonuses, meaning that they will do just as well against Morgan’s more advanced troops as they would against other units. This plays to my faction’s strengths and will give me something of an edge against Morgan next time around.
Once I am satisfied that I have enough mindworms, I contact Morgan and demand that he transmit some of his research data to me. Predictably, this enrages him, and he declares war on me. We once again start fighting, and my units clearly have a significant advantage, winning most individual fights. However, Morgan has a significant stockpile of troops, which keeps me from conquering any of his cities for some time. Also, due to his faction’s economic strength, he has plenty of money with which to rush the production of his military units, allowing him to build units much more quickly than I can.
It is during this second war with Morgan that I encounter several of the other factions. After trading maps with one of the factions, the Believers, I find out that I am alone with Morgan on a medium-sized continent. All of the remaining factions are scattered about on three large continents. I also find out that the faction that’s currently in first place, the Hive, has significantly more cities, technology, and Secret Projects than any of the other empires, including my own. I resolve, once the war with Morgan ends, to “deal with” the growing power of the Hive. In the next gamelog, I will provide some background on Secret Projects, finish my war with Morgan, and confront the Hive.
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NatesLog's Alpha Centauri (PC)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Saturday 27 November, 2010
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