SMAC/SMAX
 

Alright Civ/SMAC lovers...with the annoucement of Civ 4, I got a fever...a fever that needs SMAC/X to cure...

Haven't played it in 3 or so years...anyone here fired this baby up recently? If so, what changes/patches/additions have you found to be most satisfying?

I know I'll do the following:

--Change world size to make it larger (I like long, buildup games)
--Cut down on the power of helicopters (way too much of an advantage for human factions)
--Make the cost of Planet Busters HUGE...
--Cut down the power of the Fungus...just never really feel in love with the worms and fungus...
--Download a couple of extra factions to spice up the game (I don't play with the aliens, ever...)

Basically, I plan on playing SMAC/X like Civ...it's been the best succesor to Civ 2 to this date (still), and the only parts I never got into were the alien portions...

Anyways, I'd be interested to hear what others have done, or are doing with the game...

If you haven't played it in a while, you know you want to fire the game back up and lose a month or so of your life...come, just do it...

Kevin

I would, except you can't buy it in stores, and ebay wants like $65 for it.

Ouch, I'll have to protect my game CD's...they'll help put my kid in college someday I guess.... :)

I bought it just a few months ago as part of a game pack in Sam's Club...

I installed SMAC on my laptop a few weeks ago...and it wouldn't run (said the processor wasn't supported). bummed me out.

:eek:

I thought I saw a copy of it not two weeks ago out here. I wonder...

I saw a copy as part of a laptop collection yesterday in my local EB games.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...195239137&rd=1
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...195273477&rd=1
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...195305549&rd=1

Those are in UK and each less than £3 (around $5.50) - I guess you'd have to pay extra pnp.

In fact there's a US one here:
http://search.ebay.com/Alpha-Centaur...trypageZsearch

that is $4 'buy it now'

is that for Alpha Centauri, or Alien Crossfire, or both?

I played a lot of SMAC a couple of years ago. It's a great game - maybe the best "Civilization" in many ways, with distinct enemy personalities, different cultures, a good backstory and innovations like territorial borders and the like.

My major complaint - and the reason I don't play it anymore - is that air power is rediculously overpowered. Gyrocopters, needlejets, etc. move so quickly and with such power that the endgame is entirely offensive. You just can't play defensively, building multiple cheap untils and stacking them in the cities. They'll be wiped out. Ground troops mean nothing - all you need is one to actually capture the city. The rest is up to the Air Force. As much as I like seeing an air force actually mean something, it really detracts from the game knowing the path to win is to rush the tech tree toward air units - and the path to losing is letting the computer AI get there first.

that was just for the original game.

I played the expansion...it didn't seem like there was any real difference as I remember. Is that incorrect?

I have only played the original! but I Amazon sez

huh?

http://www.firaxis.com/games/game_detail.php?gameid=6

Is that a Win 2000/XP machine? If so, there's a patch for that.

http://www.firaxis.com/downloads/Pat...ate_v1.03f.exe

thanks. I'll have to check that out. I thought I had run that, but maybe not...

I had the same error, and the compatibility patch didn't help either.

Try changing in your ini file to

ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1

This worked for me, I still get the error, but the game will run afterward no problem.