Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri

Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (sometimes abbreviated to SMAC or Alpha Centauri) is a 4X turn-based strategic computer game created by Brian Reynolds and Sid Meier under the auspices of Firaxis Games in 1998. It is based on a fictional attempt by human beings to colonize a planet in the Alpha Centauri star system. It picks up where Meier and Reynolds’ earlier titles, Civilization I and Civilization II, left off. An expansion pack called Sid Meier’s Alien Crossfire (aka SMACX or just SMAX) was also released. It has been described as “Sim City meets Dune”.

According to the storyline of the game, humanity is destroying itself through war, famine, pollution, and poverty, but before it can complete self-destruction, the U.N. launches an enormous colonization starship called Unity. The Unity is destined for a planet in the Alpha Centauri system. This planet, named “Chiron” (but often just called “Planet”) is very similar to Earth.

However, before the starship fully reaches Planet, forty years into the journey, the Unity suffers a core malfunction, awakening many of the crew, who then proceed to fix the malfunction. Before they are done, however, the captain of Unity, Garland, is assassinated by an unknown assailant. The rest of the crew is awakened soon after.

When news of the assassination spread, the crew panics, and the ship begins to break apart due to mishandling. Seven leaders take up the challenge of leading a faction onto Planet by use of colony pods. (The game’s video introduction depicts an eighth escape pod separating from the Unity, only to explode shortly thereafter.) As Unity breaks up in high orbit, supplies, components, and factions spread everywhere. After the colony pods land, the player comes in to take control and aid their faction to victory over the others

Within the game, the player assumes the role of one of the 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. Unlike Civilization I and Civilization III, Alpha Centauri allows the player to fully customize units. 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.

• Posted by: absalom
• Tagged with: 1998 | 4X | Strategy | XXXX
  
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