I loved Civ III.
I’ve played All four Civ’s, Colonization and Alpha Centauri.
Not relevant here, but Alpha Centauri is the best
I like 3 best because of the pace of the game. I could focus on research and I’d have time to build my buildings and an army.
In 4 I spent all my time keeping my cities happy. I never had time to wage war.
Did they fix the problem in one of the later patches / expansions ?
The option to choice the pace of the game would be valuable.
I don’t understand your problems in Civ 4. 
Depending on the level of difficulty, you start with content citizens and can use temples and luxuries to keep them happy. In 50-odd games, i’ve never had unhappiness (nor health problems).
Playing either the Arabs or Spanish on Noble, I could win a military victory before gunpowder was ever discovered.
I’ve been playing Colonization to reaquaint myself before the new version appears.
It has great possibilities but needs:
None of these should be a problem!
I like the Fountain of Youth. In Freecol, it makes exploration worth it - get the founding father that guarantees good results from lost cities, and it helps a ton!
One problem I have with the original Colonization is that combat seemed to “streak” a lot, where you would have a complete turn where no matter what battle you started, you would win. The computer sometimes had streaks too, and your 3 cannons and 4 dragoons behind a fortress would get wiped out by natives and European regulars without ever winning a battle. This happened in every single game I played, and I didn’t enjoy it even during the “lucky” streaks.
I noticed this too. You can amass an army and have it wiped out unfairly.
I only found this happening when I run it on a modern system. If I run it on an old Frankenstein machine I don’t remember it happening. But now you’ve got me wondering.
I bought the classic version recently this year and (once I’d got my head around quite how it was supposed to be played) quite enjoyed it. My main gripes are the game goes pretty slowly and the graphics are, of course, abysmal. Both of these will be fixed by the new version. 
Now if only they’d remake or do a sequel to Alpha Centauri…
Finally!
Someone else who sees it.
None of the Civ games ever got close to the personality and depth of Alpha Centauri.
I think in fairness a remake of SMAC comes quite high on the list of desired remakes that feature on websites and in magazines - I doubt we’re alone in wanting it.
You’re certainly not the only one. I’m glad that civ4 at least took some of the social engineering ideas from alpha centauri and incorporated it into the civics system, though. Now they just need to work on a unit design system similar to alpha centauri, but maybe not as advanced. Something in between “here are the specific units you’re allowed to build. No customization ever!” and “here are the 900,000 different units you can build with your current tech, and you have to click 118 times every time you research a new tech to tell the computer how to update your current designs”.
The end-game of alpha centauri was retarded. It was a “who can get +2 economy or higher first” rush, and once you got extra energy production from your social engineering the game was pretty much over no matter what level you played on. You had to gimp yourself by not playing morgan or pushing the free market economy button just to give the computers a chance.
Colonization was a game that had an economy every bit as deep and intriguing as alpha centauri’s government and military design mechanics were. In my opinion, colonization was a better game than alpha centauri because you couldn’t abuse the awesome economy mechanics in the same way that you could abuse social engineering and unit design mechanics.
Also, wonders that give you +50% attack are stupid, stupid, stupid. The secret project (i forget the name) that gives you +50% psi attack was absolute nonsense, combined with the 90 gajillion ways you could improve your alien breeding lifecycles. There is literally no defense against mind worms that cost 20 resources, once you have that wonder. Not breeding alien life forms was just another way you had to purposely gimp yourself in order to keep the computers competitive.
They can’t. The rights to SMAC are split up between two different groups, none of which is Firaxis. So far, talks about getting the rights released from the publisher have gone nowhere. 
Funny, I always played my best with the Gaians, and found those who played Morgan in competitive games to have real trouble. To me, the key was to get your social choices to where you had the equivalent of the clone vats, or simply build the cloning vats yourself (much more helpful); once your cities expanded as fast as food allowed, you were unstoppable.
Of course, there were as many ways to boost your defense against psi attacks. The secret project you’re thinking of is the Dream Twister. Easily counter by the Neural Amplifier especcially as Native Lifeforms don’t benefit from the improved hit points on the new reactors.
That’s not exactly true. If you attacked someone with a native life form, or if your native life form was attacked by a normal unit, both units had 10 hit points regardless of the reactor used by the normal unit. A demon boil with the dream twister will shred a 40 hit point unit just as quickly as it will a 10 hit point one.
And the neural amplifier wasn’t a counter to the dream twister, because it doesn’t stop the dream twister from giving you an advantage against the other 5 factions. The dream twister gave an advantage against 5 factions, and if someone else got the neural amplifier (god help you if someone got both the dream twister and the neural amplifier) they got an advantage against ZERO factions.
Mind worms were stupidly strong even without the dream twister or neural amplifier, anyway. They’re cheaper than the units that are supposed to match them, unless you built defensive units with no armor and the morale + psi defense upgrades. It’s much easier to get lifecycle bonuses from buildings and social engineering than morale bonuses, too. If you decide to go all out psi defense with cheap units that have no armor, you lose 12 defenders a turn against a single chopper with even a moderate attack value. It’s lose-lose! You can’t stop someone determined to mind worm you to death unless you build mind worms yourself. And if they get the dream twister and you DON’T get the neural amplifier, you’re sunk. If they DO get the dream twister, you’re STILL probably sunk even if you do get the neural amplifier, because its five jillion times easier to get lifecycle bonuses than it is to get morale upgrades, and native lifeforms are cheaper than their normal unit counterparts.