Alpha Centauri Sale on GOG

Good Old Games (GOG) is currently offering Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri for $2.99 through Jan. 2. This classic sci-fi version of Civilization is DRM-free and is already updated with the most recent official patch. This version does not include the Alien Crossfire add-on.

Dangit, I’ve been meaning to get this, but it’s Windows-only.

Hey, they’ve got Ultima VII and the first two Lands of Lore up, too. And on sale! Sweet.

Argh, I broke down and bought SMAC about two days ago. I had lots of fun playing it way back when I was on a Mac, and had been putting off getting a Windows version for a while. I highly recommend checking it out.

NOTE: Eco-damage can be a real problem if you don’t know how to manage it, but there is a meta-gamey (but non-cheat) way to eliminate it. In addition to eco-damage from tile improvements (which can be negated by building a tree farm and hybrid forest in that base) you have a “threshold” production level that applies to all your bases; exceeding it leads to eco-damage, but if a base’s production stays below that threshold, you’re in the clear. You can easily find yourself way over this safe limit later in a game when you start building factories and other production-boosting goodies. The trick is that the threshold changes over the course of the game based on what you do. Each fungal “pop” reduces the threshold by one (for all bases), leading to some nasty positive feedback; using a planet buster reduces the threshold by five. Some buildings will increase the threshold by one (for all bases) when built: Centauri preserve, temple of Planet, tree farm, and hybrid forest. For some reason they won’t increase the threshold if they’re built before your first “pop”, so bear that in mind. If all your bases have all of these buildings and you still have eco-damage, you can scrap and recycle them and build them again for a further increase in your eco-damage threshold. Do this over and over until none of your bases have any eco-damage. If you plan using planet busters (or are about two get a new tech for a new kind of factory), you may want to scrap and rebuild your preserves a bit so you don’t suddenly find many of your bases well above your threshold. It’s a bit silly tearing down and rebuilding a facility over and over, but it sure beats trying to fend off swarm after swarm of locusts.

I got it a few months ago for a slightly higher price. GOG’s regular prices are quite reasonable. I’ve bought about 10 or 12 games from them, and never had any problem.

While I’ve enjoyed playing SMAC again, it’s also reminded me of why I stopped playing it the first time. When you’ve got like eight different types of formers, let alone all the variations on the defensive and attack units, there is such a thing as too much. It’s still fun, I just don’t try to keep upgrading all my units all the time and manually find the ones that the auto upgrade skips for some reason. I find that makes me a lot less mental.

Yeah, I almost never designed my own units. It’s just too much micromanaging.

Oddly, I always liked ship designing in games like Master of Orion. Not sure why it works there, but not here.

For some reason my Alpha Centauri manual is sitting next to my PC. I must have pulled it out of a box while I was trying to find something recently. (Trying to find something is my primary office activity these days.) SMAC was one of those games that had its own distinctive atmosphere, for lack of a better word; just seeing the manual transported me directly back there.

I wonder if I can find the disk(s). Would it even run under Windows 7?

The GOG version works fine under Windows 7.

I remember how when I played the game way back when, moving units was ponderously slow. It seems to have just been a matter of processing power; once I have my mag tube network in place, I can whisk my units across half the map in the blink of an eye. It’s actually pretty funny when the old-timey “keep moving <unit>?” fail-safe kicks in after a fraction of a second.

It can be a pain pruning obsolete units from your unit workshop, but I rather like the wide variety of units I can make. I remember the first time I realized I could make colony pods and formers with drop pods; this was on a huge map where one or two of the continents were still unclaimed. Divert production of all my bases to drop colony pods for a turn or two, and then a few more turns of drop formers, and whole continents could be fully colonized within a couple of decades. I almost feel like writing a short story about the people during that time.

I remember when PC Gamer gave this game a 98-99% ranking, headlining it as the “greatest game of all time?” when it came out. Funny, it didn’t even win the GoTY for the magazine 6-odd months later. :wink:

I liked it, thought it could be immersive, but my God it was fugly to look at! It was too much for me - pinks and browns and blues. Yech.

I had a copy of SMAC years back, though I never have managed to get my hands on Alien Crossfire. I remember one game playing as the University. I was alone on a largish, very fertile island with a significant stretch of ocean between me and the main continent. With Zhakarov’s research bonus I quickly built up a naval force for defense, and turtled. In that game I managed to build every single Secret Project, and then didn’t feel the urge to play anymore.

I’d be more interested in buying Master of Magic at this point.

I got sucked back into it a couple of months ago, and have been playing it intermittently ever since. It’s a lot faster on current computers, that’s for sure.
It’s as enjoyable as I remember - basically, Civ2 with the added fun of the unit workshop, society settings and psi combat. Does still have the same problems as I remember - one or two broken wonders, and once you’re ahead, you’re ahead to stay, the AI can’t catch up. And in my experience the Gaians are far and away the best faction for a human player, especially on a large or huge map.
I really wish they’d get the rights to Alien Crossfire: I’ve never played that and would love to see what’s in the expansion

Hmm, I might have to give it a shot. I could never get my roommate’s copy to play on my computer due to some hardware conflict–I think it was the graphics card was too advanced or something like that. I doubt I’d have that problem on a MacBook.

dang they have all 3 of the Star Control games, but only for PC :mad:

I’d love to play the first 2 again and try the 3rd, but no Mac client means no money from me

The third one sucks so no loss there. There’s a free version of Star Control 2 called the Ur-Quan masters that’s also available for the Mac. You can get it here: http://sc2.sourceforge.net/

That remake is very good. I’d go ahead and get it.

I remember compulsively going out of my way to destroy Sister Miriam’s faction. Take that, religion!