Civ 3 vs. SMAC

[Blackadar]

I've been going back to a couple of old classics - Civ III and SMAC lately. After playing them back to back, it's interesting how much of a step back Civ III seems to be from SMAC.

Below are some of the relative strengths of each program:

SMAC
- 3D terrain makes terrain improvements much more stategic (in addition to having more improvements)
- 3D terrain adds new layer to strategy vs. opponents - global warming, cutting off rainfall, etc.
- Opponents have much more personality
- Better story line
- Better atmosphere
- Customizable units gives strategic depth
- Better endgame
- Better diplomacy (due to council)

CIV III
- Familarity with concepts. This is pretty big because SMAC's different technologies tend to blend into one another since they're so...different.
- Better graphics
- More customizable (mods)
- Better AI

Overall, SMAC is just a better game IMHO. Civ 3's endgame is tedious (polution patrol) and the different leaders are annoyingly treacherous. And the issues with corruption and war-weariness in Civ 3 makes the endgame annoying as well.

SMAC has a couple of challenges - the graphics are dated (who picked those colors to begin with anyway???) and the AI is suspect. Fungus and mindworms can alter the game but can be used to your advantage, especially during the endgame.

The depth of gameplay choices in SMAC just blows Civ 3 away - manipulating rainfall or sea levels to your advantage is a just flat-out devilish fun. I like that fact that Civ 3 is modable, but I have a terrible time having mods crash to the desktop though (including DYP).

I hope Civ 4 follows more of the SMAC model rather than the Civ 3 one, but since Brian Reynolds is gone, I don't hold much hope for it.

Oh well, back to SMAC!

[Calis]

How freaky, I was almost going to post much the same thing yesterday.

I completely missed SMAC when it came out as I was never much of a Sci-Fi fan. Just recently got into it and tried it out and wow. I've had a blast with it, playing it almost non-stop the past few days. Civ 3 just never clicked with me.

Is the expansion worth hunting down for it? I haven't noticed it around anywhere, but haven't looked real hard.

Also, this gives me an opportunity to pose an SMAC question, how the heck do I stop probe teams? I'm at war with the Peacekeepers now and having my way with them in actual combat, but they're tearing apart my cities with spies. I'm working on a Secret Project now which will stop them, but there's got to be another way.

Great game though, can't believe I missed the boat on it.

Another bonus point for SMAC I think is the voice acting. Some of the best around imo. Love the personalities also, I just know everytime I see that stinking Fundamentalist lady, can't remember her name..there's going to be a fight.

[Blackadar]

Miriam of the Believers. She's the only faction that I won't even play AS - I hate her that much.

As for probe teams, look at your government setup. Different setups hurt your rating - usually if you're encouraging advancements, you're also encouraging getting wailed on by probe teams.

$$@%@# Anal Probing!

If I remember correctly, the add-on was pretty good. It added a couple of Alien factions to the game that really could play havoc (since they start off very strong) with the balance of power.

[jeff061]

I played both heavily on release. While i got a ton of enjoyment from SMAC, I prefer Civ3, no question. SMAC feels to loose for me. I liked being able to vote on stuff, like atrocities and global leader(i forget the real title), and being able to customize items.

But i prefer the tighter territory of civ3 and the focus on trading resources. Then again I've really only played 3 games of this type, Civ1, SMAC, and Civ3. So the concepts being referred to as tired in Civ3 didn't strike such a negative chord with me.

[Buccaneer]

That's funny. I felt that SMAC was just a fancy Civ2 scenario that had an awful theme. To me, the best Civ games are some of the more elaborate scenarios and while I hate SMAC, I would certainly rank that ahead of Civ3. That probably tells me how disappointed I was in Civ3 when it came out (and from what I have heard, the expansion packs have not improved the game - just made it more of the same).

[Eaglesfan27]

For those of us who are having problems with their acronyms todays, what is SMAC?

[Blackadar]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

That's funny. I felt that SMAC was just a fancy Civ2 scenario that had an awful theme. To me, the best Civ games are some of the more elaborate scenarios and while I hate SMAC, I would certainly rank that ahead of Civ3. That probably tells me how disappointed I was in Civ3 when it came out (and from what I have heard, the expansion packs have not improved the game - just made it more of the same).

You should probably try SMAC again. It's quite a bit different than Civ 2. Of course, if you like scenarios, that could be why.

I never understood some of the gameplay decisions in Civ 3. It seems like they went through and tried to make it harder. Adding "culture". Adding "revolts" by newly-captured cities. Increasing "war weariness". Increasing "corruption".

Culture is nice, but it's not that important in the game.

War weariness makes it tough to sustain a war as a Democracy - even when you're ATTACKED. And since your enemy doesn't have to listen to you, it's comicly easy to screw up a Democracy by attacking it and refusing to negotiate. Or have someone do the same thing to you.

Revolts are just patently absurd in some cases - I've seen revolts by cities when I've had more military units in the city than they had citizens!!! What's wrong with this picture? The only way to really take over a city is to take it and starve out the existing citizens so when the population bounces back it'll be with your citizens. Yet you don't suffer any morale or popularity penalties with this strategy. Do ya think that if we took over Mexico City and starved it down to a small town there wouldn't be any ramifications in the world?

Corruption makes it difficult, if not impossible, to expand your empire by conquest. You really can't get anything build in the newly occupied territories. Yes, you can build the Forbidden City to get another capital to reduce corruption. But the Forbidden City is such a long construction project (one that you can't hurry along) it just becomes tedious.

These wouldn't be so bad except the designers really didn't open any new victory avenues when they closed these. I guess it shows (as does Rise of Nations) that Brian Reynolds was the mastermind behind the Civs.

[Blackadar]

SMAC = Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

One more major issue with Civ 3 - resources. It's a great idea and fun, but the endgame ones are SO important that you really can't win if you don't get any. And that's not really fair to spend 5-10 hours in one game just to lose because of a random resource generation. Oil, rubber and aluminum are just too vitally important to trust to luck.

If you're in a tight game and you don't get oil while your opponent does, you're done for. And that's not really fair since you don't know where it is until it's WAY late in the game. Frankly, the game would be much more interesting if you knew where all the resources were (and they shouldn't deplete) but you couldn't use them until it was time.

So you may know you have no oil in the early parts of the game...and it would dictate your strategy for much of the game - or at least until you had it. But at least you'd have a chance and I think you'd see great battles fought over resources that aren't yet important - which would be funny and strategic at the time. Do you go to war over that oil and weaken both you and your opponent while your other opponents get stronger? Or do you wait and try to find another way?

[Buccaneer]

If I recall, my main criticism of Civ3 was making the game more linear, esp. in forcing the timeline on advances. That was so un-Civ-like that it still boggles my mind. As far as the rest of the game, you are right. I had always felt it was a kluge of good intentions that never worked well together. Civ2 was nearly perfect in its simple yet elegant gameplay and of course, in its unlimited nature of scenarios designing and playing. Civ3 still can't come close to matching Civ2 in its scenarios even after all of this time. As far as SMAC, I have read the manual cover to cover. You have to like sci-fi to play and that's what I hate about it.

[Blackadar]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

If I recall, my main criticism of Civ3 was making the game more linear, esp. in forcing the timeline on advances. That was so un-Civ-like that it still boggles my mind. As far as the rest of the game, you are right. I had always felt it was a kluge of good intentions that never worked well together. Civ2 was nearly perfect in its simple yet elegant gameplay and of course, in its unlimited nature of scenarios designing and playing. Civ3 still can't come close to matching Civ2 in its scenarios even after all of this time. As far as SMAC, I have read the manual cover to cover. You have to like sci-fi to play and that's what I hate about it.

Buc, you're not the only one who doesn't really like the sci-fi aspect. I'm not a big fan of it either. It's just damned difficult to grasp the technologies at times.

I guess I can overcome that b/c the rest of the game is so good

[Eaglesfan27]

I've never played SMAC. It sounds like I'll have to check it out at some point. It sounds interesting.

[Blackadar]

SpamBoy may have been here

[Leonidas]

The SMAC civilzations just didn't have enough character for me and the scenario is too rigid compared to the normal civ games.

I also thing the Civ 3 Conquests upgrade really did wonders for the game. It added mor civs, more improvements, made coalition building much more plausible. The Conquests pack really made the game what I thought it should have been all along.

[Crapshoot]

I loved SMAC- great game. What bothers me about Civ 3 and the first expansion pack is that it added little to solo play- Im not interested in multiplayer, and that bothers me. I havent played it in a while, but one of things that annoyed me about 3 was that you couldnt create scenarios like 2- like WW 2, because you could not set up specific dates and/or set relationships between CIVs. Is this fixed, or do all User-created scenarions still start at 4000 B.C. ?

[Blackadar]

Originally Posted by Aadik

I loved SMAC- great game. What bothers me about Civ 3 and the first expansion pack is that it added little to solo play- Im not interested in multiplayer, and that bothers me. I havent played it in a while, but one of things that annoyed me about 3 was that you couldnt create scenarios like 2- like WW 2, because you could not set up specific dates and/or set relationships between CIVs. Is this fixed, or do all User-created scenarions still start at 4000 B.C. ?

I think that was addressed if I remember the reviews correctly...but I could be wrong.

Oh, and I think I saw SpamBoy go by...

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by Blackadar

Buc, you're not the only one who doesn't really like the sci-fi aspect. I'm not a big fan of it either. It's just damned difficult to grasp the technologies at times.

I guess I can overcome that b/c the rest of the game is so good

Yes, I can believe that.

[cuervo72]

I really liked SMAC, and played it much, much more than Civ III (well, having kids had a lot to do with that). I have to pick up Civ III again sometime, I've been in a few conversations about Civ and similar games recently. I should give SMAC another whirl too.

I never bought Alien Crossfire, and regret not having done so (I'd swear I saw it a couple of months ago at Sam's Club, packaged with 2-3 other games, but didn't get it then either for whatever reason). But I liked SMAC because it had a general sense of forboding...I liked the feel of the game (though I had to gamma correct the thing like mad). It was basically Civ 2, with borders, customizable units, and a few other improvements. I thought it was fantastic.

[lcjjdnh]

I actually hate sci-fi but I love SMAC. I got Civ III when it came out but just never got into it and stuck to SMAC.

[Flasch186]

get the tml3 mod for civ 3...all of a sudden i was reinvigerated to play it. its awesome, Cannabis as a resource...nice.

[Peregrine]

Great thread! I'm a huge fan of SMAC, and I definitely like it better than Civ 3, though the latter does have some neat features. But the science fiction element and just all the cool stuff you can do in the game (drowning an opponents lowlying cities by terraforming their sea level is a blast!) definitely gives the edge to Alpha Centauri. In addition, the storyline and having each of the factions have real character and differences is a huge plus, with Civ 3 I don't feel much difference between the civs, but it's very noticeable in SMAC. I just recently reinstalled it and have been playing again.

If you're a SMAC fan and want to get all the strategy info, Vel's guide is the best I've ever seen!

http://www.civ.org.pl/articles.php?a...&ArticleID=103

[Calis]

Ohh, would love to read that strategy info, but I was having a tough time finding a working copy of that...the dl links at the site you posted aren't working for me.

Just me?

The sucky thing is, I can't for the life of me get SMAC to run on my PC. I got it to load up fine on a friend's PC, so I just have to spend more time over there to play it.

[Karim]

The links didn't work for me either.

I remember reading the story updates about SMAC that were posted. I even went as far as to think about ordering the novels that were written, the story was really engaging. For whatever reason, I didn't buy the game until it was in the bargain bin and was unimpressed. This thread will cause me to reinstall, however.

Civ3 was good but not the Civ I remember.

[Peregrine]

Calis, Vel actually had his guide self-published into a 250 page book (it's that detailed!), which I bought, so I'm not sure if the earlier, free versions of the guide are still available. You can get the book at http://www.booksurge.com/author.php3...ntID=GRTU00118

I found a working link to his older 2.0 version at http://members.fortunecity.com/googlie1/id77.htm.

[Peregrine]

Dola - Also, regarding the expansion, it's pretty good in my opinion. It adds several new factions, some of them pretty interesting to play (I like the Data Angels, myself) some new functionality and special projects (a couple of which are probably overpowered, especially the one that builds an airbase in every base!) and most importantly adds two very strong alien factions. They are a good bit more advanced than the other factions at the start of the game, so if you start out right next to them you can get wiped out easily, but to balance that they are always at war with each other, and you can't play with just one in the game, both have to be there. There are some special techs so you can build units to deal with them, once you discover those techs you can defend against them a lot easier.

Plus one other benefit, the aliens aren't human so the other factions don't care if you use atrocities against them. For me the way to victory is all about nerve gas, nerve gas, and more nerve gas.

[Peregrine]

The sucky thing is, I can't for the life of me get SMAC to run on my PC. I got it to load up fine on a friend's PC, so I just have to spend more time over there to play it.

I'm a dola machine today - Calis, you may want to try installing this patch, I've found it was necessary to make the game play on my Win2000 machine. If you're getting crashes, etc when starting the game this may do the trick.

http://www.firaxis.com/downloads_detail.cfm?file_id=60

[OldGiants]

Originally Posted by Karim

The links didn't work for me either.

I just d/l'd both versions. I use LeechGet, perhaps that's the difference.

[Calis]

Originally Posted by Peregrine

I'm a dola machine today - Calis, you may want to try installing this patch, I've found it was necessary to make the game play on my Win2000 machine. If you're getting crashes, etc when starting the game this may do the trick.

http://www.firaxis.com/downloads_detail.cfm?file_id=60

Thanks, I had tried that patch earlier and no dice. I had to use it on my friend's machine to get it to run properly, but it didn't make a difference with mine. The only thing I can come up with is it doesn't like my video card. I'll keep on fighting though.

Looking like I might have to go hunt down the expansion.

[jeff061]

One more major issue with Civ 3 - resources. It's a great idea and fun, but the endgame ones are SO important that you really can't win if you don't get any. And that's not really fair to spend 5-10 hours in one game just to lose because of a random resource generation. Oil, rubber and aluminum are just too vitally important to trust to luck.

I liked this. It forced you to think before you did something tha could damage your diplomatic ties, and it forced you to go to war or create a coalition to go to war in order to secure the resources. You couln't always play the game on a rail(strategy-wise) from start to finish.

[Honolulu Blue]

I had SMAC and put it back in the box within 2 hours. HATED IT, though the reasons are fuzzy at this time.

Civ 3 wasn't impessive, but I did get a few hours of play out of it and may eventually go back to it.

Civ 2 was great and I vastly preferred it to either of those games, though it's kind of hard to go back to it now.

[Karim]

Well, thanks for this thread Blackadar. I fired up the game last night and was quite impressed. The voice actors are indeed outstanding, the depth is outstanding and I think the intro. movie is the best I've seen for a game.

Things I disliked were the colour of the roads which made it difficult to see against the fungus, poorly delineated border lines and terraforming, which I find too complicated for my tastes. I set them to auto but I've had a few fall victim to the mindworms.

Not bad at all for a three year+ old game.

[Eaglesfan27]

Will SMAC run on Windows XP without problems?

[Blackadar]

Originally Posted by Eaglesfan27

Will SMAC run on Windows XP without problems?

Yes.

[Peregrine]

Things I disliked were the colour of the roads which made it difficult to see against the fungus, poorly delineated border lines and terraforming, which I find too complicated for my tastes. I set them to auto but I've had a few fall victim to the mindworms

The terraforming is a bit tricky until you get used to it. I tend to build the first few farms/mines/etc around a base then automate the former for a while. but I keep most of them manually controlled for roadbuilding, to clear fungus, etc. After you get the advanced terraforming options they will be even more important for drilling thermal boreholes and creating new rivers and such.

I agree about the borders, it would be nice if they had well defined borders like Civ 3, but I've learned to work with them.

[Blackadar]

Originally Posted by Peregrine

The terraforming is a bit tricky until you get used to it. I tend to build the first few farms/mines/etc around a base then automate the former for a while. but I keep most of them manually controlled for roadbuilding, to clear fungus, etc. After you get the advanced terraforming options they will be even more important for drilling thermal boreholes and creating new rivers and such.

I agree about the borders, it would be nice if they had well defined borders like Civ 3, but I've learned to work with them.

I'm not sure what you mean with the border thing. SMAC's aren't always perfect, but they're pretty decent. It was one of my favorite things...I can't go back to playing Civ 2 anymore because I get frustrated by the lack of 'em.

[Swaggs]

I haven't played SMAC in probably close to two years, but I still hate Miriam of the Believers. I believe their color was orange.

I still remember when I developed nukes and bombed CEO Morgan. Wow. I don't believe I have ever used nukes in any CIV or SMAC game since.

[daedalus]

Originally Posted by Swaggs

I haven't played SMAC in probably close to two years, but I still hate Miriam of the Believers. I believe their color was orange.

You are correct, it is orange. And I can't stand her, either. She's the only one that can take me warmongering near the start of the game. I usually play as Santiago with Green - Research as my social choices.

Social choices is one reason I can't go back to Civ anymore.

Originally Posted by Swaggs

I still remember when I developed nukes and bombed CEO Morgan. Wow. I don't believe I have ever used nukes in any CIV or SMAC game since.

I can only ever remember using nukes once. Yang - the faction/leader I despise the second most after Miriam - nuked one of my primary cities where I had 2-3 Wonders and I got absolutely pissed. Nuked the living daylight out of a ton of his cities. Otherwise, I just can't do it.

[Peregrine]

Yes Yang and Miriam are very annoying. I remember one game Miriam had a lot of technology (I was playing that time with Spoils of War on, usually don't) and was causing a lot of trouble, I had had a long, long war with her, she used nerve gas several times against me. I finally won by council vote, except she wouldn't accept the outcome, so we all had to put her down, and it was pretty tough even with everyone against her! She brought out the nukes with a fierceness and really mauled my attacking forces that way.

[ScottVib]

Man... now you guys are making me have to go back and reinstall SMAC. It was the only Civ game that my girlfriend was able to hold an interest in longer term (playing hotseat MP).

I bought SMAC so late from the bargin bin, that I've never been able to find the Expansion, I wish I had been able to dig up a copy.

[Eaglesfan27]

Originally Posted by cuervo72

I really liked SMAC, and played it much, much more than Civ III (well, having kids had a lot to do with that). I have to pick up Civ III again sometime, I've been in a few conversations about Civ and similar games recently. I should give SMAC another whirl too.

I never bought Alien Crossfire, and regret not having done so (I'd swear I saw it a couple of months ago at Sam's Club, packaged with 2-3 other games, but didn't get it then either for whatever reason). But I liked SMAC because it had a general sense of forboding...I liked the feel of the game (though I had to gamma correct the thing like mad). It was basically Civ 2, with borders, customizable units, and a few other improvements. I thought it was fantastic.

This thread has made me look for SMAC and Alien Crossfire. I've found SMAC on several sites, but Alien Crossfire is only available as a "Laptop collection of games from EA, including Tiger Woods, Red Alert 2, Sim City 3000 Unlimited, SMAC, and Alien Crossfire." Gogamer's website states that the item is currently on backorder, and I can't find this pack anywhere else. Do you think that Gogamer will eventually get this item back in stock or since it is so old, it will never be available?

Nevermind, I found the collection at Amazon, and I've ordered it from them. Hopefully, it arrives without problem.

[Swaggs]

I was hoping to recapture the old SMAC fun with Master of Orion III, but, sadly, it sucked.

[Peregrine]

I bought SMAC so late from the bargin bin, that I've never been able to find the Expansion, I wish I had been able to dig up a copy.

I had the expansion, but misplaced it somewhere, but luckily I found a copy of it for 5 bucks in the pre-played game section at Electronics Boutique.

[Crapshoot]

I'd like to join the anti-Miriam brigade- how I hated that bitch. Did anyone here ever like playing as her ? I tended to go for the University, or Morgan- and perhaps sometime the Gaians- the Spartans and Miriam never appealed to me..

[Peregrine]

I've played as just about every faction, Miriam's fundies are a very strong faction, really one of the best if you want to take over the world. You have to do it quick though, at the start of the game you can roll over just about anyone but over time your lack of research starts to wear on you. I'm playing the Spartans in my current game, they're a very good faction even if you're not trying to kill everyone. Really I find just about every faction is fun to play, though some are different (playing Cult of Planet and going all native is tricky if you're not used to it!)

[Karim]

I'm playing as Morgan and just had a long drawn out war with Miriam. I dominated only because I was the only faction with air power (we've since signed a truce) but along the way I managed to piss off the Spartans who have now developed the technology as well. The problem is that I see Miriam's building up troops right on my left border while I'm fighting the Spartans on the right.

I can't stand the conquest victory. Where's the fun in killing everybody off? Miriam's already anihilated the Hive and University. There should be some major drawback in killing off a group of people.

[sabotai]

I played primarily as the University. That's usually how it goes for me, I tend to lean towards the research bonus groups and races in these games. Yes, I hated Miriam, and Yang was another one I hated. I usually teamed up with Morgan. Never used Nukes in SMAC.

In Civ and Civ2, I did. One of my games I remember the most was being in a nuclear war with China. Forget if it was Civ or Civ2 (pretty sure Civ), but we ended up destroying each other pretty badly, along with the rest of the world. It was a true nuclear holocaust. When it was finally over, and the end of the game was near, no city was left over a 3 in size and most of them were shrinking due to the enormous amount of pollution. And because most units were also destroyed, there was no one there to clean it up.

Fun game.

[ISiddiqui]

Hi Buc... seems like something we'd discuss on that other site .

SMAC is the best Civ game ever made, bar none. The reason so many are put off by it is because it was on Alpha Centauri instead of Earth, and that is understandable. But SMAC was so much better than Civ2 in terms of basic gameplay. It had the faction specific benefits that Civ3 was going to have, but it had 3D terrain, which affected rainfall and movement. It had factions and leaders with REAL personality. It had a great story (btw, I'm written into the backstory they used to have on the website )! The government selection was top notch (instead of just a government, you picked the style of governance, economic model, social model, etc). And it had great fluff... nice cutscenes, AWESOME wonder movies, and every time you researched a new tech, you'd have the description spoken outloud (LOVED that).

Civ3? Hated it. It was annoying. The AI was super expansionist, which being a builder put me off. Resource scarcity was a cool idea, but in practice kind of sucked. And they never continued with 3d terrain or the government model of SMAC. And they took out ALL the fluff! NO WONDER MOVIES? WHA?!

[atatange1]

You guys made me get SMAC out again. It is great. But I can't get it to run on my comp. I run XP but even with the XP patch it won't work. Any help is appreciated.

[Blackadar]

Originally Posted by atatange1

You guys made me get SMAC out again. It is great. But I can't get it to run on my comp. I run XP but even with the XP patch it won't work. Any help is appreciated.

Interesting. I'm running XP as well and have not had an issue.

I know that doesn't help much...sorry.

[Yossarian]

if your getting the error about wrong cpu open the

\Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri\Alpha Centauri.Ini

file and set the 0 to a 1

[atatange1]

Wow, thanks Yoss. How did you know to do such a thing?