SFDebris' Review of Alpha Centauri (Plus History of Civ)

[antisocialmunky]

So I've watched this guy for a long time.  He used to make really nice reviews of Star Trek properties but then expanded out to general Sci-Fi like Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5 and then broader into Speculative Fiction like Discworld and Foundation.  Recently he's been expanding into anime, comicbook, and video game retrospectives where he covers the history and development of a property (the Transformers and Marvel one are really amazing).

Today he just released his Alpha Centauri retrospective about the history of Civ and the development of Alpha Centauri. Like most of his game reviews, its more about the narrative and philosophies behind the game rather than the gameplay.

http://sfdebris.com/videos/games/alphacentauri.php

Thought you guys might be interested in that sort of thing.

Edit: Well I guess part 2 is more of a lets play so I can't really recommend part 2 that much.

[Brian Shanahan]

Squee!!!!!

I'm paying him $5 a month to show my appreciation.

[darrelljs]

Bummed the audio doesn't work for me, but just from the list of games chosen for review I expected awesomeness.

Darrell

[Commodore]

Yeah, that was an excellent review. That, coupled with this new let's play:
https://lparchive.org/Sid-Meiers-Alpha-C...ismuller)/
...makes me miss ol' SMAC/X. What would be needed to get a PBEM going? I'm trying to remember what I restricted myself from to make Transcend games a challenge. No supply crawlers, probe subversion, or pop booming...

[antisocialmunky]

I kinda wish that they would remaster that game like blizzard did with Broodwar.

[T-hawk]

Alpha Centauri isn't going anywhere with any remaster or remake because the intellectual property ended up with Electronic Arts who are the biggest poopyheads in the industry.

If you want to propose a PBEM, all it takes is someone starting a thread and finding an audience.

[Commodore]

If you want to propose a PBEM, all it takes is someone starting a thread and finding an audience.

The question is more one of viability. I recall of whole lot of broken things; the aforementioned three stood out as the biggest but I'm sure there are a lot of others. What kind of banlist would an RB-style SMAC/X PBEM even begin to need?

Wrapping back to the topic, although the reviewer's play was clearly casual his commentary on the history of the game was fascinating. I'd forgotten that Brian's degrees were in Philosophy and History, I miss the olden days of programmers-as-renaissance-men. The writing of Alpha Centauri was incredibly solid, far better than a lot of modern games' "let's hire a Serious Professional Writer" results (studiously not looking at ME: Andromeda). Some of my favorite Sci-Fi stories are found in SMAC, Homeworld, Freespace...

[T-hawk]

The question is more one of viability. I recall of whole lot of broken things; the aforementioned three stood out as the biggest but I'm sure there are a lot of others. What kind of banlist would an RB-style SMAC/X PBEM even begin to need?

Broken is in the eye of the beholder. There are a ton of mechanics that look broken only in single-player when you're comparing to the AI who doesn't use them. If everybody in a multiplayer game knows how to do something, then that simply becomes the standard baseline. Supply crawlers aren't broken. A 30 mineral unit to harvest 2/turn from a forest is merely a good payback ratio. Same goes for upgrading supply crawlers to cash in for instant wonders, that's the same principle as chop/whip/overflow wonder tricks in Civ 4 that we've been doing forever. Pop booming, same thing, everybody can do it (and managing the food and happiness to do it is a lot harder than you think and meaningfully skill-testing.)

Broken shouldn't merely mean strong, but be reserved for the things that literally don't work right in the program. One bug is that upgrading a unit from the workshop screen doesn't consume its movement for the turn as an upgrade should. Another is using the workshop to put a weapon on the standard probe team, sneaking access to a 2-move rover chassis before you research the tech. And the interface loophole to move a terraformer to a new tile without losing its invested turns (activate it from its supporting city screen.)

"Unfun" is a different category altogether, and that's where probe team subversion would be, just like espionage in Civ 4. Legislating against this is always a slippery slope, you're always tempted to ban the next most unfun tallest-poppy. Planet busters would surely be next, then maybe nerve gas or the wonder that gives road movement through fungus (nasty surprise attacks), and where do you stop?

[RefSteel]

where do you stop?

I've never played SMAC, and don't know what any of those things actually do, but the answer to this seems pretty clear to me: You stop right around the point where the person making the slippery slope argument goes from "surely" to "maybe." If probe team subversion is as bad as BtS espionage (with its forced civic and religion swaps and attendant anarchy) and Planet Busters are clearly unfun as well (are they anything like BtS Nukes?) then ban them, absolutely. If nerve gas is in the "maybe" category, people can debate whether they want it banned or not, and there's your list of 2-3 banned things.

As for the fungus-road wonder, nasty surprise attacks are only unfun for the victim, and that could be said of any combat advantage anyone can get from anything.

[greenline]

Wrapping back to the topic, although the reviewer's play was clearly casual his commentary on the history of the game was fascinating. I'd forgotten that Brian's degrees were in Philosophy and History, I miss the olden days of programmers-as-renaissance-men. The writing of Alpha Centauri was incredibly solid, far better than a lot of modern games' "let's hire a Serious Professional Writer" results (studiously not looking at ME: Andromeda). Some of my favorite Sci-Fi stories are found in SMAC, Homeworld, Freespace...

personally i blame javascript
and also agile