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Review - Wikipedia
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (sometimes abbreviated to SMAC) is a turn-based strategy 4X computer game created by Brian Reynolds and Sid Meier under the auspices of Firaxis Games in 1999. It is based on a hypothetical attempt by human beings to colonize a planet in the Alpha Centauri star system. It picks up where the games Sid Meier's Civilization I & II left off. An expansion pack, Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire, was later released.
According to the storyline of the game, the Earth has destroyed itself through war, disease, famine, and other catastrophes. The United Nations manages to launch a colonization starship, the Unity, to Alpha Centauri, where an Earth-like planet, Chiron (often just called "Planet"), has been discovered; it is hoped that the best and brightest of mankind aboard the Unity can build a perfect civilization there.
As the Unity approaches Alpha Centauri, a malfunction occurs, awaking the top officers from suspended animation. During the crew's attempt to repair the damage, the commander, Captain Garland, is assassinated. Due to the critical damage of the Unity, the ship's seven top officers each, together with likeminded crewmembers, lays claim to an escape pod and lands on Chiron. These seven, with their conflicting personalities and ideologies, then begin to build a society in their own likeness - leading humanity once again to factionalism and war.
Within the game, the player assumes the role of one of the seven faction leaders and attempts to expand their colony and achieve victory. Players engage themselves in a race against the other factions, and are free to adopt any number of strategies in pursuit of their goal. Scientific discoveries within the game determine what technologies are available to particular factions, which in turn determines what facilities and units they can build at their colony bases. Unlike the previous Civilization games, and those to follow, Alpha Centauri allows the player to fully customize units.
Also, while not unique in this regard, Alpha Centauri is an unusual civilization-building game because it is open-ended and has multiple, customizable parameters for victory. The player can choose to work toward a victory based on diplomacy, economics, conquest, or transcendence.
While not being a direct sequel of Civilization II, Alpha Centauri was considered a continuation or a successor of that much acclaimed game, because it had the same general principles as Civilization II did, and had been made by many of the same people. It was also thematically linked, as the earlier game had ended with mankind leaving Earth to travel to Alpha Centauri, the moment at which SMAC begins.
During the development of Civilization III, many people on Apolyton Civilization Site, which was very active in providing ideas for the game, said that Civilization III should take many concepts from Alpha Centauri, which was by many considered to be the best 4X game at the time. Civilization III was subsequently released, being based on the Alpha Centauri engine.
The magazine PC Gamer awarded Alpha Centauri a score of 98%, which was the highest score ever given by that magazine—Civilization II being the previous holder of this record with 97%. In 2004, PC Gamer gave Half-Life 2 a score of 98%, making it tied with Alpha Centauri. The magazine also gave Alpha Centauri Editor's choice and Turn-based strategy game of the year awards in 1999.
Alpha Centauri has also won several Game of the Year awards, including those from Denver Post and Toronto Sun. It won Turn-based Strategy Game of the year award from Gamespot as well. The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences named Alpha Centauri best strategy game of the year. In 2000 Alpha Centauri won the Origins Award for Best Strategy Computer Game of 1999.
In the community of Civilization players, many quotations from Alpha Centauri, which are shown at different points in the gameplay, are also quite popular.
The game has also sparked a trilogy of novels (see below) and a strategy guide by Chris Hartpence ("Velociryx"), which was later printed and published.
Unlike comparable games at the time of publishing, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri employs (orthographic) 3-D rendering for both the terrain and units. This is made possible by the "Caviar" voxel library by AnimaTek International (now Digital Element), which renders the voxel models and terrain geometry using self-modifying assembler routines.
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