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PREVIOUS ARTICLES

#56 GAMERS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN Like an empire, Frank Johnson strikes back on behalf of the gaming public. #57 A BUBBA'S EYE VIEW: INTRODUCTION Roger Oepkes introduces a series of articles for the Column. #58 WAR AND CIVILIZATION David Emery is looking to strike a chord between reality and simplicity in gaming. #59 A BUBBA'S EYE RATES SMAC (Part I) Roger Oepkes writes about the successes of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri #60 MULTIPLAYER CIV... Die hard multi-player advocate Kwang quits COLUMN ARCHIVE

Failures:

1) The design workshop is a concept that sounds much better in theory than it was delivered in practice. Ideally, the design workshop was supposed to provide the opportunity of designing up to 32,000 unit combinations. The problem is that most players will only use a few dozen different units during the course of the game, as there are obvious unit types that every player must use. As a result, a player who spends too much time prototyping units will quickly fall behind and spend too much time trying to upgrade units that should never have been built. Then again, a player who likes to tinker will probably disagree with me.

2) Automation of terraformers and implementation of base governors were supposed to be ideas that would reduce the level of micromanagement and speed the game overall. Although this sounds great, the developers certainly didn't deliver this. Automated terraformers can be seen to commonly build useless improvements and to spin aimlessly in circles. Also, the auto governors simply love to churn out obsolete and improper units turn after turn. Therefore, even a novice player will soon turn off these functions just to eliminate the annoyance.

3) Few if any gains were made in regard to the combat system. Combat is still resolved as a contest of champions and this cruelly favors the attacker. In addition, airpower is hopelessly overpowered and this is a huge advantage to the human player as the AI uses airpower poorly. I will sum it up best by saying that the combat system is a ceaseless, mindless attritional doomfest. In short, it's unit pushing at best and a player who likes to be a "general" will see many more shortcomings as well.

4) The trade system provides little or no impact on the human player. I rarely find myself short of energy credits, as there are numerous ways to increase the energy base. As a result, the developers severely handicap one of the factions by almost eliminating economics as a means to wield significant power.

5) The AI is easily manipulated by the human player. Examples of this are the AI exchanging bases with special projects to the human player for a worthless base and manipulation of the social engineering settings to incite or prevent conflict. There are many others as well and they all detract from the game play. All in all, many experienced civers will find the "Transcend" difficulty level in SMAC to be far easier than the "Deity" level in Civ II.

6) Cheats are used to increase the difficulty of the game rather than good AI coding. This is all too obvious in that "random events" are not random at all. The human player who gets out ahead will surely experience every conceivable ill fortune. Therefore, don't be surprised if your base full of SP's disappears under the impact of a meteor or you lose 3 or 4 bases due to the formation of a volcano when you get out ahead on the power graph. In addition, the AI has the unique ability to launch their planet busters over an unlimited distance even after the developers assured us that this wasn't possible. The bottom line is that all of this makes the game annoying instead of difficult.

7) The game imbalance favoring attacking strategies. This covers things like the combat system, disparity between relative attack and defense strengths, unit imbalances favoring air units and clumping of starting locations. All in all, an aggressive player has a decided advantage over a passive one and this really undermines the alternate victory conditions that were added to the game. In addition, it really handicaps multiplayer games, as those who can perfect the "Rover Rush" and "ICS" tactics are the likely victors.

8) The release of the game when additional testing was obviously necessary. Unpatched versions of the game will have dozens of obvious problems like automated bombing routines that don't work, improper calculation of unit values in the workshop and improperly calculated police ratings. Therefore, a new purchaser of the game is strongly encouraged to download at least the first 3 patches in order to have a game that comes close to the advertised product. My problem with all of this is that most of this was so obvious that it should have been fixed before release of the game.

9) Improper balancing of the special projects. Certain SP's provide overwhelming advantages that detract from the game balance. In particular, The "Hunter-Seeker Algorithm" comes to mind as it essentially ends the game in most cases. The resulting immunity to any probe team actions is overly powerful as it eliminates one of the best features of the game. Needless to say, this should have been caught in the development stage.

10) It is overly generous to call the graphics functional. Although "hard core" civers are not supposed to be able to appreciate eye candy, the use of proprietary graphics was a mistake. The overall game is hard to look at as too many items have the same color schemes. This is especially important when you consider how long it takes to play a game. In addition, many of the units look alike and this slows the pace of the game as players have to spend additional time making sure that the right unit is being sent where needed. In short, the developers would have been better served with an approach to graphics that served the player rather than a concept of having a unique looking planet.

All in all, it is this reviewer's opinion that SMAC is a good game that could have and should have been significantly better. The inconsistency of the conception and implementation of so many ideas shows an underlying brilliance that was not fully achieved. Is it as good as Civ II for the time, technology and circumstances that surround it? Yes. On the other hand, it is also fair to expect that game developers should come up with new ideas and not repeat past mistakes. Finally, the irony of the story line where great hopes go awry are not lost on this reviewer as more than a little of this came through in the finished product.

As a result, I would rate "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri" a solid buy for both the veteran civer and the first time civ buyer. It's an even better buy if you can get it below full retail price. On the other hand, make sure that you download the first three patches as they are key in making the game playable.

PART I: INTRO, SMAC'S SUCCESSES

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