October 22nd, 2010, 06:29
Posts: 328
Threads: 3
Joined: Jan 2006
First of all, let me join the chorus of people congratulating T-hawk on his very impressive Transcendence win. Thanks for the write-up!
And now, to reminisce a bit - I spent far too many hours playing Alpha Centauri over the years; probably only Civ4 + FFH beats it for time spent. I'm not a pro player by any means - I never ICS, only pop-boom accidentally, forgot that nerve stapling exists, don't rush with crawlers etc.
Still, I went up the levels, winning on Thinker, then Transcend with different factions, then started playing with self-imposed variants - 3CC, OCC, no crawlers, seabases only, forests only (well, not all at once, but you get the idea).
After a while, even that got old and I was almost ready to put the game away for good - but then I went wandering through the text files and realized that with SMAX, I can create new factions quite easily (admittedly, reusing the original factions' art).
Thus, the game got a new lease of life, as over several months new factions started battling for supremacy (in ascending order of weirdness):
1) Librians, inspired by the movie "Equilibrium"; a cross between Spartans and Hive, fond of Police State.
2) Gnostic Heresy, a religious bunch prizing knowledge and understanding of an unfamiliar world; playing like a cross-breed of Gaians and University with a +1 Planet, +1 Research and able to go FM, they are my favorite faction to go OCC with.
3) Envoys, inspired by the Altered Carbon series of sci-fi books where human minds are downloaded into bodies, and change as easily as we change clothes - to simulate this, their bases start out with an automatic Psi Gate, allowing unit teleportation.
4) Freak Kingdom - starting out with a Punishment Sphere in each base, they never have to worry about happiness. With so many angry yet productive people in their cities, their naming scheme is a homage to Hunter S. Thompson, the angriest writer I've had the privilege to read.
5) Cowboys - a military-industrial complex run by Gordon Gecko, their +3 police rating and a fondness for running Fundy FM makes for an interesting warring civilization.
6) Hedonists - a faction with penalties to economy and industry, and an appalling 200% tech costs, they start out with the equivalent of Planetary Datalinks, gaining any tech that three others have acquired.
7) Minor Voices - an "alien" acquatic civilization, these represent the minor sentiences that are to be subsumed within the Planet overmind - and don't like that fact very much. Merging with humans to create hybird Deep Ones, they tend to populate the seas as AI, making expansion into it more difficult. As a human civilization, they have penalties to growth, planet and economy, and unable to run FM, find getting energy difficult, leading to a very different game. I've also been toying with removing their 'alien' flag from game to game - if only for the pleasure of seeing their ugly mugs in the Council screen.
Of course, the civilizations aren't balanced, but they did offer a different experience from the original ones, and with varying civ goals warfare seems much more unpredictable (messed around with AI priorities for this - not really sure how much of an effect that had). I've had different versions of each Civ for player and AI as well, to beef up some of the civs whose unique abilities the AI can't use very well.
So yeah, good game, good times.
!