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Brilliant

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 40 / 40
Date: September 07, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I write this review well over a year after the game came out simply because I have to reiterate to those that may not have the game how great it actually is. I say this, because even after a year, I am still playing Alpha Centauri. There are not very many games that interest me 3 months after I beat them, much less a year. It is so satisfying on so many different levels that whenever I need a break from another game, I'll spend a couple days exploring Alpha Centauri again. There are several different ways to win. You can conquer the planet through military might, be elected Supreme Leader by the Planetary Council, Corner the Energy (the games currency) market, or the Ascent to Transendence, which is basically the most technologically advanced faction. Such parameters allow for varied styles. Want to beat your neighbor senseless? OK. Are you sneaky and want to forment revolts? You can do that to. Or you can buy off votes in the planetary council with cash or technologies. But it is many of the small things that make this game shine. Alliances actually work - your friends will help you when you need it, cut you off if you stab them in the back, and grow suspicious if you become to powerful. You can give away cities to reward a faithful vassal or pacify an enemy. If you commit atrocities against an enemy they will fight you to the last man. However, if you are a noble enemy, they will submit to your will and become your vassals. Such small details are glorious in the otherwise "kill 'em all" world of computer gaming. My few complaint with the games are niggling. On the higher difficulty levels it seems you are battling with a hostile planet rather than smarter enemies - which seems a copout for what is otherwise a robust AI. Also, the end game can really drag. If you have conquered two or three other factions and have a ton of cities to manage, a turn can take up to half an hour to manage everything. These small things aside, Alpha Centauri is brilliant game design at work. After a year I only wish other game designers had taken a look at some of the options the Firaxis team offered.

Great game at this price

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 33 / 33
Date: November 30, 2000
Author: Amazon User

It took me a long, long time to really get into this game, but once I did, I really came to appreciate its complexity and playability. Like Civilization and other turn-based games, you develop a civilization from a single initial city with little military power, wealth, or technology into a large, planet-spanning, technologically advanced society. You compete with other growing civilizations (called "factions" in this game) for resources, land, and influence, and you can further your goals by military power, stealth, diplomacy, or a combination of these. Terraforming a hostile planet is also a very important part of the game.

Each game can play out very differently depending on the military and diplomatic choices that you make. You can also adjust many aspects of your society, such as your political and economic structures, values, and ideals, all of which have concrete effects on the game (making it easier or harder to learn new technologies, for example, or to produce highly trained military units). Also, one thing that is nice is that you have a lot of control over many automated features. If you want to manage every aspect of your city production or terraformer behavior, you can; or you can turn it all over to automated governors and forget about it.

Anyone who is familiar with turn-based strategy games will probably want to pick this up at this price. It does lack the historical connection that can make Civ 2 so addictive but is still a complex and interesting game (and it takes some time to figure out how everything works). Also, there are several different ways to win, so it's not necessary to go through the tedious process of capturing every single enemy city to win the game. If you have not played turn based games before, though, I'd recommend starting with CIV 2 and picking up the "scenarios" expansion pack.

One of the greatest ever and still a contender.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 25 / 25
Date: February 28, 2002
Author: Amazon User

It still surprises me how many fans of the Civilization series missed out on this one. Created by Sid Meier, a legend in the computer gaming and also the creator of the aforementioned Civilization games, this game reached a zenith that few video games ever dream of reaching. It's funny, but Civ 3 is actually a throw-back when compared to Alpha.

I've played a lot of strategy games, both real-time and turn based, and Alpha Centauri reigns supreme for replayability. There's so much going on with all the different advances, secret projects, customizable units and the like that you can play it over and over again and never get bored with it. One of the things that bothers me about Civ 3 is the total lack of a multiplayer element. After playing Alpha for a couple of years, I was certain that Civ 3 would use all those ground-breaking multi-player features like an in-game voice chat (no third party software necessary) modem to modem gaming and even a play by e-mail. No such luck. After buying Civ 3 and playing it for a month, my friends and I went right back to Alpha.

Alpha also has something else that Civ 3 doesn't: an extremely good story. The ongoing battle between the different factions is eventually eclipsed by the restlessness of the sentient planet they'd come to call home. There are several paths to victory, the easiest being conquest and the most difficult being transcendence. What other game will you ever play where the ultimate goal is to reach a higher plane of consciousness and even a form of omnipotence?

Alpha is the most sophisticated and intelligent game I've ever played but it can be as simple as the player desires. Ultimately this is a game about humanity, who we are, what makes us tick and the meaning of life, or at least how we perceive it. That's a pretty bold theme for a video game. After you've played it once, you'll find that every game after will peel back another layer of the game to reveal a new depth and intricacy. Now that the price of this game is in the single digits there's no reason for you not to own it. It's the Citizen Kane of video games and ages like wine. In a field where faster and stronger pushes the envelope over creativity I can't think of another game I can say that about.

Civilization in Space

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 16
Date: August 19, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Alpha Centauri is a turn based strategy game. You are the leader of one of seven rival factions who setteled on Chiron, a planet in the Alpha Centauri system. In the game, You build cities and manage them, build armies and attack, and conduct research.

Every fan of Civilization will find himself right at home in Alpha Centauri, even though the two games happen on different planets in different times. Major improvements from civilization are superior graphics, the ability to costumize your own army units, and 4 different ways to win: The traditional military conquest, Cornering the Economy, Becoming a superior leader of all the factions, or the new and most challenging way: Making contact with the planet itself, which is a living and highly advanced organism. The game also contains a great plotline, revolving around the player's relationship with "Planet".

A five star game.

Even More Addicting than Civilization II

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 15
Date: March 24, 2001
Author: Amazon User

If you've ever read the Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy, much of this game will seem vaguely familiar--it borrows heavily from the concepts of terraforming Kim Stanley Robinson used.

The first expedition to another starsystem has malfunctioned. Seven different factions touch down on the surface of the Alpha Centauri system's primary planet. You lead one of them. Equipped with only a colony pod and a few basic technologies, you build bases and terraform the planet.

Although the strategic concepts are similar to Civilization II, several enhancements make this a much more interesting game. The planet itself can be your ally or your enemy. Each faction has a distinct personality & set of advantages. By playing a different faction, you can shift the strategic demands of game play. You can also queue production at each base. This means you don't have to perpetually return to bases to set production. You can automate formers to improve a base or build roads/mag tubes.

This is a turn-based game. If you have to walk away to take a phone call, play will stop until you return. The Alien Crossfire upgrade to the game adds a number of new technologies, new factions, and yet more strategies for play.

If you like the strategic illusion of building and running an empire, you'll have fun with this game. Whether you'd like to develop peaceably or conquer your opponents, this is the game for you. With so many possible combinations of play, the number of approaches to the game are virtually limitless.

(If you enjoyed this review, please leave positive feedback. You can read my other Amazon reviews by clicking on the "about me" link. Thanks!)

STILL GOING

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: December 16, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I've had the pleasure of owning this game for over a year now and I still love to play it. After all this time I've never repeated a victory, meaning I've never had the same end result. The graphics are great and the speed is wonderful. There are so many diffrent options for you to choose from that it would be counter-productive to list them all here. I've recommended this game to everyone that has asked me about strategy games. So now I'm recommending this game to you. If you like turn based games and like playability then this is the game for you. You can't beat this price either, I paid alot more for it!!

A Classic. No, really.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: November 28, 2000
Author: Amazon User

This game takes the Civilisation genre that its author created years before and puts the final polish on it.

The mechanics of the game are rich. Times past i have wished that someone would take one of the fantastically detailed strategy board games like "World In Flames" or "Fire In The East" and automated their mechanics via computer. Then I have remembered that Alpha Centauri is that game.

I cannot say how many days of my life have been poured into this game. They were entertaining, that I can say without doubt.

comparison to Civilization 2

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: May 02, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is a fun game. The AI is good and the graphics are good for its time. The story line is a little bit choppy but I think it is better than Civilization 2. First of all you can automate all your units not just the setterlers, The computer interacts more with you, and there is a great diversity amung land sea and air units. The barbariens have been replaced with native life, and the native plants can be harmful. There are random events (volcanos, sun spot activites.ect) and it is sometimes hard to predict what the computer will do next. I have read in other reveiws that the game gets boring after a while, that may be true, but there are several ways to win the game. I find that if I play and then dont play for a while I still find the game fun. Multiplayer games are some of the best games to play, but the computer is still a good opponent. If you get bored with the current AI setup you can randomize there personalities. This game is definatly superior to Civilizaton 2

Civ 2 -1/2

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: October 17, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I will begin by saying what should be perfectly obvious to anyone who's played this game or any other game by Sid Meier. The man is brilliant. And so we have Alpha Centauri, which essentially tells the story of what happened to the colony on the aforementioned planet that you send your spaceship to at the conclusion of Civilization II.

Many previous posters here have mentioned that it's a long game, and so I will reiterate and say it's a very, very long game. Unless you're sitting in a lazyboy or have magnificently huge glutial muscles for cushioning, this game will require a whole heap of your time. This is *not* a bad thing though, and more games should take a cue from that...the experience should last.

The controls and basic setup are upgraded Civ2, which more than one poster has said. In fact if I didn't know better I'd say I *was* playing Civ2...except for one gripe. The Tech Tree is astoundingly steep. My brother (who's a biologist, physicist and general science junkie rolled into one) has played along side of me, and he can barely understand the concepts that some science advances bring you. Before I'm lambasted for this, let me defend myself by saying that in Civ2, when you researched and discovered the Wheel, or Writing, you knew what it was and basically what advances it could give you. But how the heck am I supposed to know what some of these are without a PhD?

Still, that's just one gripe, and the gameplay itself is very balanced between the 7 factions you can play as, and the AI does do a decent job of portraying the other factions as thier behavior MO's suggest. The game is very addictive, but I found myself able to pull away from it at night, which I was and still am not able to do with it's predecessor (Civ2).

Bottom line, I still play it on occasion, and while it's a great game (it's a Sid Meier at it's heart which makes it fantastic all by itself!), it still won't replace Civ2 for me. My money's on Civ 3. :)

Yes, it's complex...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: March 21, 2001
Author: Amazon User

... but it's really not! The only thing really complicated about this game is the fact that it very accurately depicts the city/civiliation management aspects. However, the game DOES feature extensive automation commands that will run things according to the directives you set. I would highly recommend playing Civiliation II a few times before getting into this though because it will help get you used to the systems in the game. The only thing that really proves confusing is a lack of real world base for the technologies in the game. Since it's set in the future, all the technology is pretty much "alien" and thus it can be hard to get your bearings.

Like I said, play Civilization II first to get a feel for the system ( and just because it's an outstanding game in it's own right) then play through the game on the easiest level a few times. The opposition will be nihil and it will give you a chance to familiarize yourself with the futuristic technologies. The game is complex, but for fans of the genre that IS NOT a bad thing, just may take some getting used to. All in all, it plays alot like Civ 2, don't give up so easilly!

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