Strategy Gaming Online - Previews : Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

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PREVIEWS

Sid Meier's
Alpha Centauri

DEVELOPER : Firaxis
PUBLISHER : EA
RELEASE DATE : Feb. 1999

I remember the day that I heard that Sid Meier AND Brian Reynolds had departed Microprose. A faint voice in my mind cried "Iceberg, dead ahead!" What was going to happen? Was the "Civilization" empire dead? Where were they going?

Well, they left to start an aggressive software firm named Firaxis, and with their first release (Sid Meier's Gettysburg) they served notice to the strategic gaming community that they were still around. The second release from Firaxis, Alpha Centauri, will prove that Gettysburg was no fluke. These guys are here to stay!

Alpha Centauri ostensibly takes up where Civilization II left off. Victory in Civ2 was when one civilization completed the construction of the first interstellar spacecraft. This game advances that storyline to the arrival of the ship at (what else) Alpha Centauri. The obligatory "reactor explosion" en route severed communication with Earth, and the strongest leaders of the pioneers quickly formed philosopho-cultural "factions". The player is to lead one of these factions to dominance in the race to colonize the planet, and ultimately to the next stage in human evolution.

These 7 factions replace the Civ "races" and each have specific advantages and disadvantages that color the player's whole experience of colonization of the planet. Each are modern worldview archetypes, such as the Spartans (militaristic), the Morganites (capitalists) and the Believers (religious).

The deep differences between these factions and their influence on the player's decisions suggest that AC will have a lot of replayability. There is no doubt that the Spartans, who receive a free morale upgrade to their units, will benefit from early and persistent military expansion. The Peacekeepers (the faction representing the United Nations) will have a decided advantage in diplomacy with a 2x multiplier in their council votes. The Gaians are the first to learn how to use the planet’s indigenes to their advantage. Each of these factions will require a completely different approach from the player.

The interfaction diplomacy is again, basically like Civ. The graphics are prettier, and there seem to be some more choices, but AC adheres pretty much to the genre-standard Civ/Civ2/MoO/MoO2 "talking head" implementation. Multiplayer promises to be more interesting however, thanks to the faction differences.

At the most basic level, AC is an evolution of the Civ engine. They have added the third dimension to the terrain, dynamic terrain, and the ability to customize units (to name only a few features) but if you are a Civ player when your first base pops out a colonizing unit your head says "settler". But this works as it gives the player some sense of familiarity in the early stages of the game, before pushing further into the tremendous array of technology, philosophy, and xenology that await him in the mid- to later-game.

It's difficult writing this preview. This game is so deep that even a few playings gave me the sense that I was only scratching the surface. The player is forced to play several themes at once: the routine explore/build/conquer theme that is the standard for strategic games; the diplomatic theme (also standard); and a novel battle against the planet itself. Not to reveal too much, the planet itself is an actor in the events which take place on AC, rather than being a passive backdrop to the human action. There’s no bug-eyed-monsters here, but rather something much more subtle going on.

Of course there was no network game available during this preview, but this facet of the game suggests an encouraging level of player cooperation may be required to deal with the planetary issues.

As I explained to a friend the other day, every aspect of AC is almost a game in itself and enjoyable on different levels. The unit design system is a pleasure – you are never restricted to "canned" unit types. If you’ve invented a technology, you can implement it into any vehicle or unit. This is a dynamic process: as you add features to a unit, that unit changes in behavior, name, and even the representative icon.

The tech trees are both in broad in scope and intricate and detailed in effect. As the design notes suggest, it is a much harder task to ‘invent’ a future, than to categorize the past. Everyone knows what The Wheel or Ironworking is, but few will immediately recognize Polymorphic Software. Yet the Firaxis team has woven a credible web of technologies and philosophies, changes in hardware, software, and ‘wetware’ to allow the player a free rein in developing their Utopia. None postulate an inconceivable technical advance, nor make ‘politically correct’ assumptions about what the future "should" be.

Similarly, the Civ2 paradigm of "inventing" a government type is gone. In AC as you develop different Social Engineering skills, you can manipulate your society’s production, economy, and core philosophies as needed (for a price of course). For example, building a free market economy of course increases your income, but similarly increases disaffection for a large standing military.

It’s no doubt that with a game of this complexity and breadth, there would be a serious problem with information flow. Yet, AC manages this with an interface design of elegant simplicity. Tutorials and popups abound, reducing the number of needless mouse clicks. The menus and buttons are logically arranged, and shortcuts are usually available where needed. As with Civ2, everything in the game is customizable from the rules to the text blurbs to the tech trees. Given the intellectual fecundity of the players of Civ2, we can no doubt expect a large number of scenarios, spinoffs, and modifications of AC as well.

One other element really stands out as a serious improvement over Civ2, and that is the helper AI. In AC, your base governors can be given general directions and this is a huge improvement over the rudimentary AI in Civ's "auto" command. Similarly, the pathfinding is much improved over Civ2, making unit management much less of a chore.

In the span of this preview, I have only been able to find a couple niggling issues: first, unit upgrades should only be allowed at friendly bases and to full strength units. Second, the major projects (the AC equivalent of Civ2 Wonders) would be more interesting if the effects were different for different factions. For example, the designing of the Virtual World project might allow the Gaians to develop simulations allowing better control of native lifeforms, while perhaps allowing the Spartans to develop better military tactics. But, the intoxicating level of detail and scope of the game dwarfs these points.

In sum, Alpha Centauri is another great product from the mind of Brian Reynolds. In reviewing the newsgroup postings about AC, it seems some die-hard Civilization 2 fans are disappointed. That may be – in AC you will not have the opportunity to tromple anyone with elephants. It’s a New World, with new techs, new units, and new challenges. Some have also compared it to Outpost, and in a sense this is correct. However, AC takes what Outpost *should* have been, marries it successfully to the gameplay that made Civ and Civ2 famous, and ends up a complete winner. Look for Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri to dominate newsgroups for a long, long time.

Previewed by Steve Lieb