Alpha Centauri

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Rising-Sun
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Alpha Centauri

Post by Rising-Sun »

I havent played this in years when first came out, unfort i lost my game when moving around time to time. Luckly i found the game from gog.com and only for 5.99. Still fun game though.

Have anyone enjoy playing Alpha Centauri? The game comes in with expansion too, Crossfire is my favorite, playing aliens :(
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Gilmer
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RE: Alpha Centauri

Post by Gilmer »

I've thought about getting it. It seems on GOG a game has to really really suck for people to give a bad review, so I don't always go by the reviews there. I might get it.
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Zorch
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RE: Alpha Centauri

Post by Zorch »

My favorite Sid Meier game!
It would be nice if he would update it.
ezzler
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RE: Alpha Centauri

Post by ezzler »

Have all seen Pandora from Matrix right? its very very similar.
aaatoysandmore
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RE: Alpha Centauri

Post by aaatoysandmore »

As all games of the last 15 years not enough aggression in the ai. It just sits there and waits for me to destroy it every game I play. But, yet, it's still fun getting to that point. I love the exploring and the blind research tree. I like building my own units also.
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Rising-Sun
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RE: Alpha Centauri

Post by Rising-Sun »

Well its my first game i downloaded from gog.com, so far its great. Infact you can backup your setup file and comes in with manual. Unfort there are no tech tree, so i had to make one.

Now for Pandora, i have to check into that later. There are some games are good and some arent, i came across some games from Matrix that is garbage. Since it didnt have demo and not much infos about it, some reviews said it was a okay game and guess that explain it.

Anyway, though i would never be able to play Alpha Centauri, i would recommend getting it though.
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RE: Alpha Centauri

Post by Chickenboy »

I really enjoyed Master of Orion (I and II) too. Probably moreso than Alpha Centauri, although I did like that too.
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RE: Alpha Centauri

Post by Darkspire »

ORIGINAL: aaatoysandmore

As all games of the last 15 years not enough aggression in the ai. It just sits there and waits for me to destroy it every game I play. But, yet, it's still fun getting to that point. I love the exploring and the blind research tree. I like building my own units also.

Try Galactic Civilizations (first one with or without expansion pack) on anywhere from normal difficulty onwards, your rear end will be handed to you cooked, fried and stuffed [:D]

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RE: Alpha Centauri

Post by aaatoysandmore »

ORIGINAL: Darkspire

ORIGINAL: aaatoysandmore

As all games of the last 15 years not enough aggression in the ai. It just sits there and waits for me to destroy it every game I play. But, yet, it's still fun getting to that point. I love the exploring and the blind research tree. I like building my own units also.

Try Galactic Civilizations (first one with or without expansion pack) on anywhere from normal difficulty onwards, your rear end will be handed to you cooked, fried and stuffed [:D]

Darkspire

I have GalCiv II with the Arnor or Twilight expansion and it's pretty good, but, like all games it's easy to get the ai to war with itself (I wish they would take that crap out of games, we don't need diplomacy just all out war war war.) They build too many ways to beat the ai when there should only be 1 way in war. All that other crap is just a delaying action. I wonder how many games would be good or great if they would just take out the exploits. No peace, no diplomacy, no trade. You're in my territory (ai's) so now you die scum. That'd be so kewl if ai's were built that way.
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RE: Alpha Centauri

Post by Darkspire »

I have GalCiv II with the Arnor or Twilight expansion and it's pretty good, but, like all games it's easy to get the ai to war with itself (I wish they would take that crap out of games, we don't need diplomacy just all out war war war.) They build too many ways to beat the ai when there should only be 1 way in war. All that other crap is just a delaying action. I wonder how many games would be good or great if they would just take out the exploits. No peace, no diplomacy, no trade. You're in my territory (ai's) so now you die scum. That'd be so kewl if ai's were built that way.

That's why I was explicit in stating 'Galactic Civilizations', GCII is good and has some really great features that I would love to be in GC, apart from F9 for the map of the galaxy, that really should have been added to GCII, but I found the AI not as sharp as GC, I have GC and GCII-UE and if I want a challenge than GC is always the way to go for me, that really is hard, doesn't cheat but seems to know what I am up to and always surprises me, the only game to have ever done that to me and I am a fossil, been gaming for well over 35 years and have probably played / owned every system and strategy game that has ever been released.

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RE: Alpha Centauri

Post by Rising-Sun »

I have GCII also, unfort it doesnt run properly on my Vista anymore and not sure if they fixed the memory leak back then. Hate buying another one that is compatible with Vista, believe they are working on part 3 now.
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RE: Alpha Centauri

Post by aaatoysandmore »

ORIGINAL: Darkspire
I have GalCiv II with the Arnor or Twilight expansion and it's pretty good, but, like all games it's easy to get the ai to war with itself (I wish they would take that crap out of games, we don't need diplomacy just all out war war war.) They build too many ways to beat the ai when there should only be 1 way in war. All that other crap is just a delaying action. I wonder how many games would be good or great if they would just take out the exploits. No peace, no diplomacy, no trade. You're in my territory (ai's) so now you die scum. That'd be so kewl if ai's were built that way.

That's why I was explicit in stating 'Galactic Civilizations', GCII is good and has some really great features that I would love to be in GC, apart from F9 for the map of the galaxy, that really should have been added to GCII, but I found the AI not as sharp as GC, I have GC and GCII-UE and if I want a challenge than GC is always the way to go for me, that really is hard, doesn't cheat but seems to know what I am up to and always surprises me, the only game to have ever done that to me and I am a fossil, been gaming for well over 35 years and have probably played / owned every system and strategy game that has ever been released.

Darkspire

I have GalCiv I as well, hell I have all the supposedly good games. Master of Orion I gave me the hardest time of any of them though. I never could mount a force to beat the ai even on normal it was just one of those games I couldn't figure out. I beat Master of Orian II though pretty easy. In MOOI though the ai would come at me with an armada of ships of all sizes before I even got a handful of just fighers built. I just had crappy producing planets for the most part.

One of the greater fun games sorta in space was Full Metal Plante. I enjoyed the quick combat of that game without having the long drawn out empire building. I'm getting pretty tired of these economy games and sim city in space games. Quick games is what I want nowadays. Whatever happened to the likes of Warlords type games? So simple yet so deadly especially Warlords IV if you had the patches like 1.05a. My god you had to play lower levels just to get a few retinues to last in the higher difficulty games. Good game Warlords IV is.
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RE: Alpha Centauri

Post by aaatoysandmore »

ORIGINAL: RisingSun

I have GCII also, unfort it doesnt run properly on my Vista anymore and not sure if they fixed the memory leak back then. Hate buying another one that is compatible with Vista, believe they are working on part 3 now.


I have vista 64 and GCII works fine on my machine. You might need to shutdown some tasks in your task manager. Sometimes things in that manager can conflict with other games. You might need to just do a reinstall and let directx update itself.
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RE: Alpha Centauri

Post by Rising-Sun »

ORIGINAL: aaatoysandmore

ORIGINAL: RisingSun

I have GCII also, unfort it doesnt run properly on my Vista anymore and not sure if they fixed the memory leak back then. Hate buying another one that is compatible with Vista, believe they are working on part 3 now.


I have vista 64 and GCII works fine on my machine. You might need to shutdown some tasks in your task manager. Sometimes things in that manager can conflict with other games. You might need to just do a reinstall and let directx update itself.

I am using cds that come in with the box version, it wouldnt install right unless the disks are damage.
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RE: Alpha Centauri

Post by aaatoysandmore »

ORIGINAL: RisingSun

ORIGINAL: aaatoysandmore

ORIGINAL: RisingSun

I have GCII also, unfort it doesnt run properly on my Vista anymore and not sure if they fixed the memory leak back then. Hate buying another one that is compatible with Vista, believe they are working on part 3 now.


I have vista 64 and GCII works fine on my machine. You might need to shutdown some tasks in your task manager. Sometimes things in that manager can conflict with other games. You might need to just do a reinstall and let directx update itself.

I am using cds that come in with the box version, it wouldnt install right unless the disks are damage.



Copy all the content of the disks to your desktop folder somewhere (makeup a new folder inside the old one) and try to intall from there. That sometimes works.
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RE: Alpha Centauri

Post by eyegore »

Pandora: First Contact is an excellent game for someone looking for gameplay simuliar to Alpha Centauri. Like AC the factions play to their ideological slant, but the GUI is much better, the art much better, the aliens are more interesting and the A.I. is far more competent. Being fully moddable (see my faction mod here tm.asp?m=3480502) using .xml files it is the game to get....as none other come close.

It does lack some of the bells and whistles (like raise/lower terrain) but future expansions I believe will flesh the game out to be the definative sci-fi 4x game on the market.

As for Gal civ...lacking warp points, tactical battles and having a silly lore base of Hamspters in space suits , I just can't take the game's overall appeal seriously. Master of Orion has been surpassed by Space Empires 4, and outside of that we have Distant Worlds, but it's GUI is it's own worse enemy. You want to install long range missles on a mining platform? unlike, say every game since 1990 -where a right click would show a new order to use them, Distant World forces you to scrap the whole design and build a new one. It's just frustratingly insane.

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RE: Alpha Centauri

Post by Rising-Sun »

ORIGINAL: eyegore

Pandora: First Contact is an excellent game for someone looking for gameplay simuliar to Alpha Centauri. Like AC the factions play to their ideological slant, but the GUI is much better, the art much better, the aliens are more interesting and the A.I. is far more competent. Being fully moddable (see my faction mod here tm.asp?m=3480502) using .xml files it is the game to get....as none other come close.

It does lack some of the bells and whistles (like raise/lower terrain) but future expansions I believe will flesh the game out to be the definative sci-fi 4x game on the market.

As for Gal civ...lacking warp points, tactical battles and having a silly lore base of Hamspters in space suits , I just can't take the game's overall appeal seriously. Master of Orion has been surpassed by Space Empires 4, and outside of that we have Distant Worlds, but it's GUI is it's own worse enemy. You want to install long range missles on a mining platform? unlike, say every game since 1990 -where a right click would show a new order to use them, Distant World forces you to scrap the whole design and build a new one. It's just frustratingly insane.


Can you play aliens like AC:Alien Crossfire? Cause i dont like playing humans, all i see is humans playing in Pandora.
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RE: Alpha Centauri

Post by eyegore »

Originally the team did want to include an Alien invasion...(this is apparant as there are xml files named Invaders) but ran out of time to include them and rather instead polished and released what they had. I do not think they would have been playable. I'm expecting this to be DLC or to be included in an expansion in the future.

Wanting to play an alien race is an interesting proposition. One could mod one in of course. Again take a look at my faction mod, give me some ideas what you would like in the alien race (looks, abilities) and that may be something I'd mod. If your interested I can mock up some models for them -- and browse the invader xml's for insights on abilities and stats. Replacing a faction would be a lot easier...not having to redo GUI spots for a 7th slot, but still all it's related files, especially speech - would have to be redone.

my mod is in the Pandora modding forum. here is the preview so you can see how I do the models. I could come up with many variations for aliens...it's just a matter of taste.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Us2bRJxI1A
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RE: Alpha Centauri

Post by Rising-Sun »

ORIGINAL: eyegore

Originally the team did want to include an Alien invasion...(this is apparant as there are xml files named Invaders) but ran out of time to include them and rather instead polished and released what they had. I do not think they would have been playable. I'm expecting this to be DLC or to be included in an expansion in the future.

Wanting to play an alien race is an interesting proposition. One could mod one in of course. Again take a look at my faction mod, give me some ideas what you would like in the alien race (looks, abilities) and that may be something I'd mod. If your interested I can mock up some models for them -- and browse the invader xml's for insights on abilities and stats. Replacing a faction would be a lot easier...not having to redo GUI spots for a 7th slot, but still all it's related files, especially speech - would have to be redone.

my mod is in the Pandora modding forum. here is the preview so you can see how I do the models. I could come up with many variations for aliens...it's just a matter of taste.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Us2bRJxI1A

Noticed on the official site, they mention there is no editor or can be modable. I asked that in the forum, no one could answer that one and that why i didnt want the game. Now the planet should belong to aliens or specific race, then humans came to settle down there. Kinda like when European Powers landed on North America Soils, fending off the natives back in 1500s.

I have knowledge to mod/scripts, etcs. Just want to know if that can be done. Modded alot of games, like Distant Worlds, GCII, etcs. For some reasons i just like playing alien species instead of human species.
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RE: Alpha Centauri

Post by IainMcNeil »

There is a lot of modding potential in Pandora. Already some cool things being worked on and I don't see why you couldn't mod in additional races.
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