It's good. A lot of the mechanics are completely unique, particularly the way terraforming and terrain climates work. It's age isn't even really a problem. Once you understand menus and hotkeys - which are basic shit like "press F for farm, R for road" - it's no different than a game released today.

The ui got a bit too much, I wish they could have just made the ui closer to Civ 2.

>>2116567
Setting and writing is top notch, but UI and actual gameplay is...eh. Could never get into it

>>2116567
The graphics and the UI are kinda shit, but that only takes some getting used to. Everything else is gold. It's true that the setting is a large part of what makes it so beloved (and why the watering-down that is SMAX isn't as highly regarded), but it wouldn't have caught on in the first place if the core game wasn't so well put together.

>>2116567
the ai is worthless and the gameplay systems break down if you powergame even a little, never mind if you abuse one of the countless bugs

its insanely dated at this point
it was something new for its era, with fancy cut scenes

>>2116567
Its good as a game too, the UI is shit but everything else is good.

>>2116567
it's a 4x with great replayability, and many features that were both ahead of its time and never implemented this well in over twenty years
>fully terraformable planet
>simulated climate like humidity impacting food yield and dynamic ocean rise/drop
>customizable military and civilian units
for me personally, this makes it the undisputed king of the genre
the setting is just icing on cake

I don't like crawlers. I feel like it obsoletes the terraforming and city placement.

>>2116567
the infantry look like they are pushing shopping carts

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>>2116567
Cool setting and writing. Atrocious gameplay, UX and UI. It's incredibly dated and you'll have to look up how to do basic fucking shit like tile improvements. Wish it was a spinoff of Civ3 and not 2, at least 3 is still functional.

>>2116567
Perfectly functional core gameplay, but unbalanced. Im really not a fan of most early civs for ics/having to play so wide, a few unbalanced ideas (crawlers and forests) go a long way in ruining the fun. But ive never understood peoples complains about the ui or gameplay otherwise.

back then when it came out it was completely new, and it seemed really cool, and I was 12 or something and had a lot of fun doing weird stuff with designs and quoting the tech quotes like a cool scientist.

today, I realized while it was pretty good, when I play it and try to do well, I realized it was very tedious and lacked a lot of newer quality of life changes that made 4x more fun and it's super hard to try to minmax

>>2116756
>>2116805
You two are legitimately retarded

>>2116567
It was good, but like dorf fort it's quite dated and not really worth playing any longer.

>>2116567
I am used to the ancient boomer tier UI and gameplay, but it is probably incomprehensible to other people.
Shame that in a way it is probably the peak of video game writing. I gave up on waiting for anything to come even close long ago and accepted that video games are generally kinda retarded.

>>2116879
What sucks is that Alpha Centauri's writing isn't THAT spectacular, it's just very deliberate. It knows when to put forward a tiny drop of worldbuilding and when to just use a Philosophy 101 quote. This was the mistake Beyond Earth made, it just babbled meaninglessly all the time and there never was any mystery or buildup.

Has flaws but it's a great game

only thing you retards remember is the cinematics
the gameplay was mediocre at best

>>2117396
it was a fucking blast, and I only started picking up on the story when I properly learned english because I'm a glorious esl
I'm afraid to even ask what games do you consider good if smac is mediocre to you

>>2116567
All I remember from playing multiplayer on LAN with friends is that the balance was fucked. Whoever gets needlejets first wins. Strap nervegas on them and any bombing run kills half the population in a city, there's no bouncing back from getting pounded for even three turns. Unless you cheese with the human hive base spam I guess.

>>2116805
I grew out of 4x a decade ago because the entire genre isn't substantive. I revisited Alpha Centauri recently and I felt that way still. It doesn't really matter what you're doing, beating the AI is simply a matter of getting turns ahead. And in most 4x games that means expanding so fast you can't properly support all your expansion. In these kinds of old 4x games that's still the case but you also want all your cities a few tiles apart so it becomes a micromanagement nightmare quickly.

Anyway, despite my grievances with 4x as a genre overall, a lot of them are still fun to put 10-20 hours into, learn the basics of and get to endgame. I find their replayability really limited past that. If you're less experienced with the genre you'll get quite a bit more playtime than that delving around.

>>2117396
lol the pirated copy I played originally didn't even have cinematics. I didn't know the game had cinematics until I saw them on Youtube much later.

>>2117396
I've had cinematics turned off for a decade and in fact do not remember most of them even though I play it all the time.

>>2116567
This game pretty much ruined all other civ like game for me.

>>2116567
AC was absolutely kino for the time but is terribly dated. That said the core game mechanics and the story shines like a star. You can still play it today and have a fun time. Which is just amazing for such an old game.
But it could be updated.
Make the AI better
Enlarge the strategic depth
Address the cheesy exploits ( lol bro just build needlejets )
Improve the graphics to modern standards
Improve the UI to modern standards.
Create a seamless MP experience for players.

The fundamental problem today is nobody can update an old game and make a modern version which is better.
Somehow the gaming industry today is dominated by narcissistic faggots and women who just cant not leave good shit alone. Instead of focusing on what made the base game so good they always have to fuck things up by adding their own spin.
AC should have been treated like a castle lovingly maintained by experienced stonemasons who added incremental improvements and additions using only the best tools and building materials.
No way that happens today.

>>2116567
It's many people's favorite 4X. I'd say it's in my own top three. The writing and character/world building does a lot of the heavy lifting but mechanically speaking it's just a very good version on Civ 2. It's dated but a lot of the UI blemishes can be fixed via modding.

It's playable and enjoyable the same way Doom 2 is if that analogy works. One of the greats of the genre, definitely has aged very well compared to many of its peers and you can definitely see why people like it. But if you're going to experience it today, you probably don't want the raw vanilla experience without at least some QoL mods.

>be Human Hive
>rush for an early wonder
>wonder grants a free tech
>use the free tech to unlock boreholes
>dig a hole to the planet's core for tons of coin and hammers
>and tons of ecological damage but whocares lma0
>begin converting Planet into Hive
>dig as many boreholes as you can, densely packed
>fill the gaps between boreholes with small cities, to collect the yield
>your territory becomes a blob of cities, boreholes, farm-solars, and nothing else
>literally every tile occupied by minmax'd industrial planetrape
>expand your blob towards rivals (gaians, nerds, corpos etc)
>engulf them with forward settles and weaponized terraforming
>the inevitable wardec is merely a formality, the war is over in ~2turns
>expand your blob towards the next rival
no other civlikes have this feeling, SMAC could be goated for this alone

>>2122942
>>literally every tile occupied by minmax'd industrial planetrape
Fuck yeah. Based Hive. I always like AC because it gave you very viable options to be a COMPLETE CUNT in ways no other game could offer.
My fav was just to sit on a continent and build tall until I could pump out shitloads of nukes. I wouldn't even bother defeating weaker factions. Then when I had enough planet busters I would UNLEASH HELL!
I would laugh as I turned their cities into radioactive craters.
I would literally jump out of my seat and dance a gleeful gig, giggling like a fucking madman!

Hee! Hee! Hee! Yes! Yes yes! Have another nuke! Hahaha! Like that bitches? Get some! Get some! Oh, so you want a nuke too? Here ya go! Plenty of nukes for everyone! Oh! Oh that's a beautiful big city you have built up there! WHAT A SHAME IT WOULD BE IF I NUKED IT! Whoops! My finger must have hit the launch button by mistake! Tee Hee Hee!

Then as the sea levels rose, drowning billions, and the entire world was turned into a dystopian Hellscape unfit for any life I would furiously masturbate.
Sometimes I would save game just before launching the first wave of nukes. Just so I could reload it later and savor the moment, over and over again.
Goddamn, I loved this game.

>>2121522
>Address the cheesy exploits ( lol bro just build needlejets )
you'd quickly realize that the entire combat layer needs a complete rebalance

>>2123246
What an insightful post fuckhead.

With so many games that have had source ports and fan remakes why hasn't this one which is so comparatively beloved and simple? All the actual effort (writing/voice acting) wouldn't be replaced, so what's the obstacle?

>>2123246
>the entire combat layer needs a complete rebalance
or maybe it doesn't?
maybe competitive multiplayer mafia could fuck off and let us have fucking fun for once, hm?
how about that?

>>2117396
>Doesn't remember the first time he dropped a fully upgraded planet buster on someone
No other game has let me terraform so recklessly and so hilariously at the expense of everyone, including my enemies, and that makes me sad

>>2116756
>he had to look up how to click on a menu
grim

>>2116756
How the fuck did you manage to live this long without knowing how to use a mouse? Have you even used an actual computer in your life? The UI isn't more complicated than any desktop OS interface.

>>2124686
Today you discovered the number of retards using 4chan to post their worthless opinions is much higher than you thought.

>>2123371
there was a mod for civ4 or something

>>2125462
Usually people that stupid to the point where they don't understand what a computer is get filtered. The nuclear apocalypse can't come soon enough. Fuck this gay earth.

>>2117941
my nigga
I didn't even know there were cinematics when I played it as a kid, until I picked up the GOG version as an adult
they're kino but I think of them as a neat add-on rather than a fundamental strength of the game

>>2116756
Anon you literally just right fucking click. Zoomers are so fucking dumb, I can't imagine how bad gen alpha is going to be

>>2125725
Gen Alpha will be better because the world has gone to shit and at least a portion of them will be forced to not be useless. Zoomers grew up in sheltered conditions and were fed bullshit their whole lives. You'll never get a generation as bad as zoomers.

>>2123429
It absolutely does. The weapons and armor added in the expansion are completely broken.

>>2125871
>millennials didn’t want to be useless, had it thrust upon them and gave up instead of participating
>zoomers are content to be useless, don’t even try otherwise
>gen alpha will be forced to be useful
Hopefully I live long enough to see that shitshow.

>>2126474
Only missing the strong men

>>2124382
well thats the new average 4chan poster, be aware most zoomers are like that

>>2116567
Yes

>>2116575
Both games have keyboard shortcuts as default way of navigating them, zoomie

>>2116727
>t. clueless

>>2116727
Your feelings are irreverent. And crawlers are integral part of terraforming and city placement, since you have far more things to factor and thus can fine-tune each and every city for maximum efficiency, rather than being stuck in the standard 5x5 cross. This makes SMAC the most micro of Civ games and it's actually fun at that, too

>>2116727
well, I love them
they can and should supercharge your produciton as you advance from a handful of high tech villages to a proper scifi civilization

>>2129243
>This makes SMAC the most micro of Civ games and it's actually fun at that, too
thats the part that filers me, the micro in this game is fun, but I just cant be arsed to optimize every one of my 50 cities. I know there is a way to streamline buildings, but every city has different needs and automating crawlers is just a giant waste of a unit

>>2129289
bruh just slap them on a tile and that's that
there's nothing to micro, just give a move and work command

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>>2129301
>there's nothing to micro
which tile should be worked first? which resource should get extracted? is there a point to rotate the workers? Is there a point for one city to cede the worker to another one? Which tile should get terraformed first, if we assume that some tiles should be delegated to drones, and some should be reserved for crawlers? There is a nice curve where pushing unoptimized gameplay (not going for nukes when the tech is almost at hand) is being penalized. The crawlers come in relatively late, after the early game have concluded. You usually have a bunch of the stuff that is just ripe for building, and that is must have. You dont have to optmize it, but then your play will just suffer

>>2129243
>This makes SMAC the most micro of Civ games
Every unit and base can be automated.

>>2129243
>>2129289
You dumb fucking niggers are something else. What's this? A zoomzoom talking shit about something he never had balls to actually play?
Fucking hell.

>>2129289
You can play at decently high difficulties without needing to care about crawlers. I think anything above that is pointless because the ai just gets massive bonuses. Crawlers are op if you're not being attacked, but they make smac less fun so I skip them. There's nothing wrong with not being a world champion if it means you actually have fun

>>2131213
They're pretty op if you're being attacked as well. You can put armor on those fuckers and they project zoc.

>Be the peacekeepers, buy Thermal Borehole tech off Morgan.
>Build boreholes everywhere, causing repeated global warming that drowned around a fifth of all ai bases
>Spartans who are council leader repeals UN Charter, only peacekeepers and morgan object
>Planet Buster Spartan bases, refit infantry and tanks with nerve gas and depopulate every spartan base they reach
>Accidently fire a planet buster at a newly conquered spartan base, pretend it's a high stress missile defense test when the orbital pods shoot it down
>nerve staple any rioting ex-spartan bases
>Spartans hastily call a UN council as my nerve infantry start knocking on Sparta Command's door to reinstate the UN charter, measure passes.

I wiped them out with conventional attacks after,. I think I quite adequately showed why you don't repeal the UN charter.

>>2116620
>the ai is worthless
Thinker mod

Who needs ships when you can use your terraformers to build landbridges and just rover conquer as far as the eye can see?

>>2116756
oh this is why new civ games don't have encylopedia's explaining their concept with formula's anymore. People wouldn't even know how to open the menu that the civopedia is in.

>>2129340
>You dont have to optmize it, but then your play will just suffer
Unless you're doing some sweaty competitive thing, that barely matters.

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>>2136887
Deserved. I love stories like this. You just don't get them in modern civ games.

>>2136887
>let's do a peaceful morgan run
>corner global energy markets
>spawn between believers and yang
>gaians spawn across water and start sending military almost immediately
>fml.jpg
>can't expand, try to go tall and maximally exploit my tiny land
>endless hordes of hive
>constant superworms due to being free market
>decide to become fundamentalist to at least have one ally in miriam
>morale helps me fight yang hordes, probe allows me to destroy their walls
>start conquering yang out of defense
>stabilized
>time to build
>spartans spawned on the jungle
>conquered the university
>declares vendetta, takes over my water bases.

WHY MUST WE FIGHT, I just wanted to build

>>2117396
I remember the asshole who stole my manual. It was a nice thick book.
I remember evaporating an entire continent with planet busters just because I could, and because I was tired of listening to Deidre.
I remember always aiming to remove Hive and Believers ASAP.
I remember playing with the unit designer do create complementary units, and upgrading everything any time I got a new component instead of just spamming jets.
I remember the war crimes, and waiting for the perihelion comm blackout to hide my atrocities from others.
I remember pirating Alien Crossfire years later, and being rather disappointed.
And I do remember the cinematics. Dream Twister, in particular, actually worked IRL and gave me nightmares when I was a kid. I always skipped that one afterwards.

>>2116567
It is actually really good with great writing and voice work. Though I'll admit the engine it runs on has aged poorly and you need the unofficial patches for it

For some reason seeing the default MSWord font on a supposedly futuristic display screen annoys me even more than if it was Comic Sans.
Know any mod that changes the outdated command menu & message window's text font into something more apropriate?

>>2138935
Only patch you really need is the CPU throttle one

>>2116567
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.

>>2116805
I think the real takeaway is that everything is fun when you're 12 and that videogames are and should be made for 12 year olds. It's just not possible to make a game that can't be broken and is also fun, and casual, uninformed play by a precocious 12 year old should be the target for game design.