Alpha Centauri on GOG - gog.la/BeyondEarthSupportGroup Patches and Multiplayer Instructions - pastebin.com/X3br4PvH THE LIST - docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_K3ziSxT9zcUUGCddS4sF1uNJTWHSbOwB1CQX2Rx4Uo/ For the next video, I have to break a commitment. However, a broken pact for a better product is always worth the trade. - CEO Nwabudike Morgan, Datalinks
Cool! Thanks for the video and for the links Mandalore! BTW... Gothic 2 Night of the Raven review. WHEN? You can't just leave us with only the first part reviewed! That's unethical.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master." So many years later and I still remember that quote.
I sit in my cubicle, here on the Motherworld. When I die, they will put my body in a box and dispose of it in the cold ground. And in all the million ages to come, I shall never breathe, or laugh, or twitch again. So won't you run and play with me, here among the teeming mass of humanity? The Universe has spared us this moment.
I remember this one hit me hard back then "You are the children of a dead planet, EarthDeirdre, and this death we do not comprehend. We shall take you in, but may we ask this question: will we too catch the planetdeath disease?" Lady Deirdre Skye, "Conversations With Planet"
@@danghostman2814 You fool! You take all the bonuses to fungi production and make bombs that plants fungi! Then bomb enemy bases, watch their production and population plummet, conquer, and then boom, you have instant best yields in the game!
Some of that game's writing was memorable. "I sit in my cubicle, here on the motherworld. When I die, they will put my body in a box and dispose of it in the cold ground. And in the million ages to come, I will never breathe, or laugh, or twitch again. So won't you run and play with me here among the teeming mass of humanity? The universe has spared us this moment." Anonymous; Datalinks
We welcome you, EarthDeirdre and earthwheat and earthtree as honored guests, for you add great power to our ancient song - planetfungus and planetworm and planetmind sing and play here, and you are welcome among us.
"I think, and my thoughts cross the barrier into the synapses of the machine-just as the good doctor intended. But what I cannot shake, and what hints at things to come, is that thoughts cross back. In my dreams the sensibility of the machine invades the periphery of my consciousness. Dark. Rigid. Cold. Alien. Evolution is at work here, but just what is evolving remains to be seen." -- Comissioner Pravin Lal ,"Man and Machine"
We've already touched on that a little bit. I don't understand what is created now, either artificial intelligence, or artificial intuition, or something like thalamus between different consciousnesses of people.
Richard Baxton piloted his Recon Rover into a fungal vortex and held off four waves of mind worms, saving an entire colony. We immediately purchased his identity manifests and repackaged him into the Recon Rover Rick character with a multi-tiered media campaign: televids, touchbooks, holos, psi-tours-- the works. People need heroes. They don't need to know how he died clawing his eyes out, screaming for mercy. The real story would just hurt sales, and dampen the spirits of our customers. "Mythology for Profit", Morgan Stellartots Keynote Speech
That montage of Alpha Centauri and Beyond Earth voiceovers made me feel that in SMAC even the "Do you really want to quit?" dialog had more personality than the Beyond Earth leaders.
@@Nonamearisto Thats EXACTLY what drones are. Drones are the uneducated, unthinking worker class. If you provide for them, they will provide for you. Make your cities dystopian hellscapes, and they will react accordingly.
I'm always pleased when someone recognizes how good a job this game did with Miriam. Fundamentalism wouldn't be half so powerful if was always stupid. I also love her quote (from the Information Networks tech, I think), "Evil lurks in the datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear. But it was never the streets that were evil." A reminder that it isn't the technology that's inherently problematic, but how humans choose to interact with it.
@@ivanjelenic5627 The problem with Miriam is that she sucked - maybe some patches buff her, but I remember her to be notoriously underpowered. So often did she fail to live long enough to see the techs to which she lends her voiceovers...
@@Eliastion Miriam is actually very strong, but it requires an in depth knowledge of the game mechanics- if you spam a LOT of cities, playing to her ethos in spreading everywhere, she can amass a military and research powerhouse in the techs she needs: warfare. Belief modifier adds +25% flat to all your attack rolls. Then you go marching on others. For things you can't deal with? You probe team. Probes probes probes. Eventually once you get air power you win, because flight with basic Needlejet w/ no armour but like an Impact Gun allows you to fight stuff two times more advanced with belief. In an open contest of battles w/ same morale, same tech (or even slightly lower tech) and industry Miriam wins unless it's Yang early. Also one thing I forgot to mention but it's very easy for Miriam to make like hive cities of her own. A Colony Pod can join a base and attach itself without needing Hab Complexes or Domes, if it's fed well w/ good rainfall and farm tiles at the west side of a mountain with condensors to terraform the east-uncultivatable desert parts of the mountain she can (along with Morgan, which I think does this strat better) make megacity complexes to feed her infrastructure. Pretty funny to see these big cathedrals with 25+ people and a scattering of other cities feeding into it.
@@TheKnightOfSmite Well, I'm not going to deny min-maxing strategies - I probably should have specified that I was talking about playing casually against AI. PvP balancing of Miriam might be good or she could even be OP, but I would never know, since I've never seen her in PvP and - on the other hand - playing against AI you just have fun and do what feels fun instead of min-maxing for the optimal performance. And so my most typical approach used to be a pacifist Diedre spending ridiculous amount of time and effort playing house with swarms upon swarms of brain-eating monstrosities, looking proudly as the boils (always captured, never produced) grow big and strong. I mean, aren't they just the cutest? And still people declared vendetta on me, for some reason. Can't they just let a girl play with her pets in peace until she's ready to merge her brain with fungus? But I digress. The point is - AI Miriam had a bad habit of dying fast more often than not.
@@Eliastion Ah yeah, Miriam in the hands of AI either snowballs and then stagnates, or just gets immediately eradicated The best faction in the hands of the AI every time is Yang
"People need heroes! They don't need to know how he died clawing his eyes out screaming! After all, the real truth would only hurt sales, and dampen the spirits of our customers." Best quote ever!
"I sit in my cubicle, here on the motherworld. When I die, they will put my body in a box and dispose of it in the cold ground. And in all the million ages to come, I will never breathe, or laugh, or twitch again. So won't you run and play with me here among the teeming mass of humanity? The universe has spared us this moment." Anonymous; Datalinks
I always played as the University so the Believers and I always got into it eventually. I loved Sister Miriam Godwinson though. She was a perfect foil to my state's 'do anything in the name of science and technology.' Twenty years after buying the game, I still think about the quote she gives on a special project: Some would ask, how could a perfect God create a universe filled with so much that is evil. They have missed a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all? It's stuck with me all these years.
The two of them are basically direct analogs for 2 characters in the RedMars trilogy, also in the prologue to SMAC their is a some clear sexual tension between Miriam and Zarkov.
I always liked playing Miriam for the challenge and because everyone already hates her and I plan to antagonize the whole world with my probeteam skimships! :D The original unpatched version was an off-the-hook wargame too.....
Alpha Centauri was a true gem in the industry: a paragon of writing and voice acting that remains a major source of inspiration to this day. Its core strengths have stood the test of time.
There's a great repository of fan fiction on the Alpha Centauri 2 online forums for those who are looking for new fan-produced content. Factions, quotations, characters, etc.
I read the manual and strategy guide before playing the game. I *loved* the writing. But when I heard the quotes read, I actually didn't think the production lived up to the potential of the writing. Especially Lal, but also more generally. I don't know whether it was the actors or the direction.
“As the writhing, teeming mass of Mind Worms swarmed over the outer perimeter, we saw the defenders recoil in horror. ‘Stay calm! Use your flame guns!’ shouted the commander, but to no avail. It is well known that the Mind Worm Boil uses psychic terror to paralyze its prey, and then carefully implants ravenous larvae in the brains of its still-conscious victims. Even with the best weapons, only the most disciplined troops can resist this horrific attack.” - Lady Deirdre Skye, “Our Secret War”
@joethepro36 well... The canon version of events involve Gaians actually beating the shit ot of Spartans. So... Nope, they are not just the harmless hippies..
I forget exactly how, but you can do this in game too without affecting by creating large mind worm stacks and releasing them into your enemy territory as neutrals. Very devastating.
@@MaskJackal100 yeah the way to do this is with a fungal missile. If you drop a fungal missile in the middle of their territory before attacking the outer edge it would keep them from mobilizing, and then if you chose ultra green ethics you could just grab them once you reach the bombing site.
@The Jester - Fool Of Hearts Get this, the 'Mary had a little lamb' bit, a maybe intentional reference to Babylon 5 where it's a refrain used to resist the intrusion of psi corps. That's some quality cross-pollination.
There are two kinds of scientific progress: the methodical experimentation and categorization which gradually extend the boundaries of knowledge, and the revolutionary leap of genius which redefines and transcends those boundaries. Acknowledging our debt to the former, we yearn, nonetheless, for the latter.
@@steampunkastronaut7081 The environment are barren because the planet is alive and trying to purge you from its surface, it sends you visions at certain stages. The random aliens that attack your cities are basically its immunologic system, and they are mostly swarms of flying psychic worms that make people go crazy.
This part was borrowed from Frank Herbert's "Hellstrom's Hive". The human hive from Alpha Centauri is very similar to the society Herbert describes. It's a fun book though not nearly as good as Dune.
"The Academician's private residences shall remain off-limits to the Genetic Inspectors. We possess no retro-viral capability, we are not researching retro-viral engineering, and we shall not allow this Council to violate faction privileges in the name of this ridiculous witch hunt! " -- Fedor Petrov, Vice Provost for University Affairs
@@Mnnvint Just like the guy who said, "We have never sought to become a Monopoly", wrote a book called The Centauri Monopoly before that secret project.
@@HadzabadZa The fact that covid appeared in Wuhan, and Wuhan just so happens to have a bio lab with biosafety level 4, i.e. the highest? A coincidence, of course.
"Eternity lies ahead of us and behind. Have you drunk your fill?" Love how everyone remembers the quotes. It's a really smart game, makes you think. I had this game as a kid but fell in love with it when I replayed it in college. The controls are fine if you use the numpad to move your units. One of the best PC games of all time IMO.
@@samuelsmith9582 I feel your pain. This actually happened to me around the time you posted that comment, and it made me buy a separate usb numpad. I actually thought the extra mobility of being able to place the numpad anywhere as its own unit would make it a better alternative than the traditional layout. A year later, and I've found the opposite is true (for me at least) and it's still no good substitute for it being integrated as part of one whole keyboard.
"The final duty of every citizen is to go into the tanks and become on with all the people." Chairman Sheng-ji Yang - Ethics of Tomorrow Man, I think I played this game far to often. This was a masterpiece.
You damn well know which quote is coming in droves because its a damn good one: "As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. " -Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights" Also nice jab at Resetera, fuck that place.
@@nocommentary1954 It's the same people who thought neogaff was a little too offensive for them so they decided to make it the safest most non offensive forum besides r/politics.
I like to imagine that while Alpha Centuari is turning into a nuclear blasted hellscape with war, Earth got back on it's feet and is now a paradise world that any citizen of Alpha Centuari would kill to be on.
Earth : Goes to hell Unity Project : TO ALPHA CENTAURI! AC : Goes to hell Homeward Project : TO EARTH! Earth, just becoming nice again : Goes to hell Ark Project : !@#$ IT, TO SPACE! Space : Space : Space : goes to hell
"What actually transpires beneath the veil of an event horizon? Decent people shouldn't think too much about that." - Academician Prokhor Zakharov, "For I Have Tasted The Fruit"
Both Civ 2 & Alpha Centauri expects you to use the num-pad for unit movement. Hence why it's so cumbersome to move with the mouse, that's not what the devs intended you to use. Good choice on the 40k god though.
This, today you can forget the numpad exists, but once you get used to it it's the best way to move in that game, and can be faster than the mouse too!
@blackrave404 I'm not saying that it's perfect. Ideally the mouse would have been just as viable as the numpad, and the numpad would have been a bit more intuitive. It does make sense that they went with numpad controls though, that was the "standard", set by Civilization 1. Looking back, we can say that it might not have been the ideal way of doing things, much like we don't think that the DOOM controls were ideal if we go back to that, but without people "knowing better", these controls made sense.
Aw, I remember how excited I was when I learned Beyond Earth was coming out and then how bummed I became when I tried it for the first time. The video sums up my frustration with that game perfectly. Very polished game, but no soul.
Yeah, it still frustrates me how shallow they made and then stopped the development because it plummeted (duh, they thought people would've buy that junk) when all they had to do - was to follow the damn formula they had all along on the form of SMAC. It was that simple and yet they failed to it with all their resources and budget.
i used to watch my parents play this game when i was a child (and was briefly scared of grid patterned floors bc what if there are mind worms when i try to stand on some of the squares) as i got older i got to play myself and still have a poster of the tech map it was interesting to have different factions to match each of my family's play style; my dad always chose spartans, mum chose gaians, and i went with the university smac will always have a place in my heart
As a kid I sat on my dad's lap and he explained how the game worked. He was so patient that when I got to play I often asked him what I should do each turn. Eventually our hotseat games progressed and we'd ally against Miriam mostly (lol). He played Lal and I mostly played Zakharov or Deirdre. I started developing tactics he never thought of, like manually patrolling mind worms as the Gaians to hunt other worms for planetpearls (energy) and to convert more of them passively, buying small bases to act as footholds to launch attacks from, and the interesting applications of the terraforming in the game to land-bridge or sink cities. I love my dad for sharing this game with me so much and giving me a passion for strategy.
So what changed? Is it game devs become incompetent despite having access to previous creations' successes and failures? I think not. It just that publishing companies earned so much money off of developement companies' creations that they bought them. Result is EA, Ubisoft, Activision etc. Banality of people in suits reign supreme over artists and engineers and the results simply show their tyrannical stupidty and greed
@@Raren77 A big part of the shallowness and copy/paste quality to modern game's mechanics is the ridiculously ballooning time investment need to make and animate all the high graphical fidelity assets. The engines back then were graphically simple, but powerful for enabling the designer's imagination, and allowing quick implementation of features. The size of dev teams now is much larger, and they work insane hours, yet games are released without the same ambition or polish I used to expect
@@Raren77 Hey, some of those who stood as indie game developers managed to make memorable games that towered anything those big companies ever made. A good example is Undertale. That thing was made with Game Maker and Paint, lol
@@steampunkastronaut7081 Yeah, I know and wholeheartedly agree. I was talking about mainstream studios, which created many classic unprecedented games than sank to the level of creating gambling games with the actual game is a mini-game as a side hustle. Btw, I remember writing this but I don't think I wrote this in reply to someone saying "Good lord, I love this game so much." What's going on here...
"Technological advance is an inherently iterative process. One does not simply take sand from the beach and produce a Dataprobe. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. Each minor refinement is a step in the process, but then we got Beyond Earth instead of Alpha Centauri 2." - Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, 'Looking Sid in the Eye'
@@megacrane833 I'm a sarcastic, snide person. I read this sarcastically and snidely. But it's text, so anybody can bring their own head voice and completely reinterpret your meaning! Are you sarcastic? Are you serious? The world can never know!
I don't know wht everyone whines about the Doctor Mandalore and Mister Tzeentch memes but I hope that Allah smites them and they don't get a good night's sleep
I remember asking my parents to buy this when I was 9 because the box looked so neat years and years later I've yet to play a game that has left such a profound impression on me HUMAN BEHAVIOR IS ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR. THE PARTICULARS MAY VARY, BUT COMPETITION FOR LIMITED RESOURCES REMAINS A CONSTANT. growing up and in my first philosophy class, random lines from the Nicomachean Ethics and Critique of Pure Reason suddenly bubble up again at work I now have all my shortcuts and wallpapers ripped from the AC Secret Project icons.
"HUMAN BEHAVIOR IS ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR. THE PARTICULARS MAY VARY, BUT COMPETITION FOR LIMITED RESOURCES REMAINS A CONSTANT." "Need, as well as greed, have followed us to the stars, and the rewards of wealth still await those wise enought to recognize this deep thrumming of our common pulse." I'm so happy I can still quote that from memory.
Fun fact, several of the Secret Projects actually contains clips from 1992's Baraka, the Dream Twister being one of them, also Baraka is an experience everyone should try.
@@Memelord-md5hs The Virtual World is a specific early game wonder. They merged with the planet's consciousness for real (in-game), not part of a simulated reality.
They never really say what Nerve Stapling actually is, but it's apparently so horrible that every faction considers it an atrocity. In game, it will automatically end a riot and apparently cause irreversible damage to your population's psyches. In one of the books, when it was revealed that the Hive faction leader kept his people in line with regular nerve stapling and would also nerve staple any captured enemies regardless of affiliation, every other faction declared war on the Hive and wiped them out. The implications are not good.
Dunno, sounds pretty obvious. You get your nerves stapled with a chip, like in all those conspiracies telling goverment staples everyone and everyone is essentially a marionette, etc. As for how it would look like, well, closest would probably be the soulless people from dragon age (excommunicated mages), just brainwashed as well. Ouch.
@@banger_land I'd say it's some sort of pleasure/pain response, Since it becomes less effective the more it's used and causes psychological damage (Which could be gaining a dependance on whatever the thing puts into your brain, Or maybe being traumatised by the pain it continuously brought you.)
The act of nerve stapling is essentially putting nodes in parts of the brain that manage pain, then you activate it and essentially put the person through so much pain they become essentially a mindless drone/puppet willing to listen to the regime to avoid pain However eventually the effects dampen, and they gain a tolerance against it which is why continually nerve stapling the population begins to stop working as much
Really goes to show how older games tended to be more ambitious, even with limited hardware. Granted, budget and time restraint are still present, but modern gaming seemed to take a backseat approuch to anything bold or new.
thats because its takes longer and is more expensive to do the same thing - in a way, advances in game tech holds everything back. Of course, this is only true in AAA, and indies/"indies" outnumber them anyway. You could ignore AAA and still never have time to play everything you would enjoy playing, most of it doing something interesting with a much smaller dev and pub budget.
Why would you? Just take a formula and refine it a bit and boom, you got a game that adds nothing new but is bought by everyone. Making something entirely new is a risk, one that many corpos are not willing to take
Risks of Flowering: considerable. But rewards of godhood: who can measure? -Usurper Judaa Marr, "Courage: To Question" I loved the aliens, but they were overpowered.
I think that was the point. The idea was that the alien factions hated on each other and would counteract each other. Not great in practice, but cool in theory.
"Gentlemen, forget what your courtesans have told you: size does matter!" CEO Nwabudike Morgan Morgan Industries Annual Report. Morgan is my favourite faction. Exploit everthing for profit and live in luxury. Sustainability? Whats that? Alpha Centuari lets you solve all your problems by throwing money at it, and morgan excels at making money. In the actual game he is also the most peaceful out of all the factions since he benefits the most from making friends and trade deals.
@@GurniHallek In the context of Alpha Centauri not pursuing sustainable enviromentally friendly practices means the ecology gets pissed and sic swarms of psychic brain eating worms at you, or worse.
The only game that I've played that felt as though it came even close to the depth of variety and setting to SMAC was Endless Legend. It's a far different genre (high fantasy) but there's many of the same elements - The factions are incredibly varied with strong personalities, what little writing there is really helps flesh out the setting and how crazy it gets, and the planet itself is a major plot and gameplay element in its own way - the planet is dying, and we miserable monsters are scrabbling to try and be the ones in control of our fates before it finally ends.
Likewise. I tried it on a free weekend, played maybe 6 hours of it, and it just wasn't engaging. I didn't play it enough to know why, but I think Mandalore here does a good enough job. Beyond Earth has no character.
Ramiel Personally I’d rather just have it’s controls, The normal graphics of Alpha Centauri are pleasing to me for some reason (Despite the fact I’ve never really played it)
@@sceerane8662 They take time getting used to, honestly, I had to literally force myself to play it at first. This is one of those games, that get better and better the more you play it, but in the beginning, it's difficult in all the sense of the word...
@@sceerane8662 Better UI, Control, and map Animations. I can play Civ 3 easily, Alpha Centauri is much harder to play though despite obviously being the better and more fun game.
At 8 years old I picked up this game at a TJ Maxx because I liked the boxart. The quotes from this game, along with its setting, still haunt and fascinate me to this day.
The original AC faction leaders brought a really profound element to the game. Often you’d want to play as a specific leader because of their personality or their ideology, just as much as the bonuses or perks that their faction provides. And their ideology was couched very simply in the leader’s specialisation and ambition, which made total sense in the narrative. Then the new human human factions show up in the expansion, and I’m just like, “Lol, what a bunch of freaks!” XD An obsessive hacker whose entire diction is a futuristic street dialect. A man temporarily turned into a simpleton by a fault in his cryo-chamber on the Unity. Catherine Zeta Jones -Sorry! I meant, Aki Zeta Five, who accidentally turned her mind into a pre-sentient algorithm. And the child born in the xenofungus is NOT the messiah! He’s a very naughty boy! I loved all of it! 😂
(Almost everything I suggest was probably beyond the engine and development time restrictions.) Narratively, the expansion factions would work if, under certain circumstances, they spawned some time after the initial Planetfall. IIRC the GURPS sourcebook actually said this was the case, at least for the Data Angels. They would have a niche after the initial factions develop to the point that they need a data broker. Pirate faction only makes sense after maritime trade (and those pressure domes) develop. Aki Zeta Five would make more sense after some cyborg tech is researched. Story of her developing revolutionary algorithm by harnessing Unity's computer during the interstellar journey could be kept, but she keeps it hidden and makes a faction out of it only after some additional hardware/wetware becomes available. Free Drones can spawn if drone riots are expanded so they could become an actual rebellion in repressive factions. Can't think of much for Cult of Planet, maybe they spawn as reaction/countermeasure for attempts to completely remove xenofungus? The alien factions should be Stellaris-style endgame crisis with actual superior alien tech, limited by their minuscule numbers. Core problem with this system is that you could not choose to play as any of the expansion. At least at the start.
@@Fuzbutt3 I actually played the mod a bit, ages ago. Left out that part because only thing I could remember for sure is that "Cult of the Planet" spawned when you complete a specific Secret Project.
@@Xazamas ahh that makes sense. I never built that wonder because all the pollutive/terraform options seemed so much stronger to me. Oddly enough they always declared war on me, I wonder why :)
Nice thing is that both Brazilian Characters you showed are speaking Spanish and not Portuguese. "Colonel" "Bien Venido" as a Brazilian my eyes roll to the back of my head
There's a reason for that, in Beyond Earth. In the game lore, there is no more Brazil: Brazil unified with the rest of South America in one big country, that has a mixture of portuguese and spanish. If you look for that faction's leader name, you will see how they blended both groups.
And the term colonel is in english, not spanish, as is the title of every other character in alpha centauri. The chinese inspired man is called a chairman, not the chinese equivalent.
Спасибо людям, ответственным за субтитры не только к этому видеоролику, но и к большинству, - если не ко всем - на RUclips-канале Мандалора. Большое спасибо!
I recall trying to eliminate the native life tiles to ruin the built in plot. It caused an immense amount of mind worms to spawn. I enjoyed getting fifty attacks in a turn. 😃
This is it for me, the best game ever made. Brian Reynolds and the old Firaxis team built a masterpiece. I don't know of any other game that can so effectively make you ponder the hard questions that humanity has always been asking itself, and encourages you to read further philosophy. The hard tech, the quotes, the personalities, the story... I have to actually force myself not to install it again because I'll probably not play anything else for the next year. Awesome review man. BTW: numpad for movement!
The only bad thing I remember from this game is that once you had figured out the right way to develop, the AI couldn't keep up in any games. Now that might be somewhat true for all games but even as a kid who probably didn't min-max everything properly I found that to be particularly true in Alpha Centauri
God I love this game. one of my favorites. those quotes echo decades afters playing. its so bad that I hear Yang's quote from the The Virtual World secret project whenever I am in pain.
Beyond Earth is one of those titles which really squanders its potential. I like the visuals and fluff (as a whole), but it's so poorly represented in the game. That said, looking deeper, even the individual fluff seems... generic. The Protectorate is supposedly religious, the only specifics we get are from a single devotional quote mishmashing several mythologies together, the rest being bland pseudo-philosophical chaff. That said, the Russian guy's quote about "Morality is measured by the progress of our work. A machine whose works bring us more progress is more moral than a lesser machine." amuses me greatly. Just... what? At least Age of Wonder: Planetfall has the decency to embrace its silly side and give its factions more personality.
@blackrave404 The Luddites were right though. If all of the fruits of the increased productivity goes to the mill owners and bankers, then that's just more oppression. I don't want to go all an-prim, but the discussions coming from Latin America surrounding the concept of "buen vivir" are fascinating.
@@pearz420 No, it's not. It makes a lot of sense. If you view progress as what's morally right, then the moral machine is that which brings the most progress.
Whilst this review shows you quite clearly have much love for this game and enjoyed playing with it, and that loves leads me to watch this video once again time to time to simply remember the young days of watching my father play this and my own failure of playing it as a youngin', I do have to remark on one thing: The controls are not poor. You are just using the more... inadequate version of it if you ask me. The mouse is great for long commands but if you wanna give more precis commands you use what they designed the whole grid system around, the numpad. This game got the age of being able to be played 100% without a mouse and can sometimes be a much easier option than using one. Just wanted to say this as that little fact could veer some from this gem.
Yeah, I agree. I've been playing this game on the train on a tiny laptop with only a touch pad and keyboard for years, and it's really easy to control once you get used to it. I also don't know why he said you had to memorize all the hotkeys. The right click menu is so great, you can access every command you'll need without having to memorize anything.
In all honesty, the sound clip that sticks with me the most is when I go to quit and the narrator says "Please don't go. The Drone's need you. They look up to you!" Classic.
An excellent presentation of a still excellent, if cumbersome, game ! I fail to understand why Firaxis never released a remastered version of it. For people wanting an Alpha Centauri experience somewhat more modern, a mod for Civ IV exists : Planetfall. It's not a perfect conversion of course, but it captures the original's game spirit quite nicely.
Alpha Centauri was a game that really blew my mind when it came out because manipulating a game environment wasn't really a thing with the exception of like Magic Carpet on the PS and later Black and White. The fact you could just up and customize units as extensively as this game could makes this a breakthrough game that I still come back to every few years and enjoy.
This game has been so important to me, ever seens i eagerly showed my very confused friends a pirated copy in middle school, 20 years ago. I honestly got a bubbling of nostalgia tears when i heard some of these voice overs. The voiceovers for the techs were able to convey so much character and philosophy in just a few seconds (both by taking some amazing quotes from historical figures like carl sagan and friedrich nietzsche, and some rather impressive original writing), and the secret projects were just amazing little pieces of art (fun fact, the scenes that were not CGI were taken from the film "koyaanisqatsi", which i highly recommend). And to this day i still have them all half memorized. The fate of Recon Rover Rick, clawing his eyes out from mind worms. Charman Yangs "what do i care for your suffering? Pain, even agony is nothing more than information fed to the computer of the mid", and the end game bonus tech with its simple "eternity lies ahead of us, and behind. Have you drank you fill?" read in "Planets" haunting, which still pops into my mind at random times. Thanks for the vid man, good to go on a feels trip. Hopefully someday they will do a revival worthy of this amazing game.
Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri is a game I have, and love... but mostly to watch. As this was and is a game my father play often and plenty. And I end up watching him plenty of times. Which have made me realize you did not know of one thing. Whilst it doesn't alleviate the overall hud problems, movement is a lot better than what you said. You gotta use the Num Pad though as a 8 directional arrow key setup. This allows a lot more control of your units movement, and feels overall more fine tuned. My father used this method only for most of his units, simply doing the order for "go here" if he knew it would take some time or was a very long way away. But the man played the game so much that even now, through his stroke and all, he memorized all the hotkeys. And overall I just love that you let it show to the world how great of a game it is :) For it truly is.
One of my top 3 tbs of all time. I got it as a kid by my mom (didnt even know the game existed back then) and I was so immersed in this game. That fat booklet that came with it was so cool ,stories ,technical data...great times
You didn't go with the network node when going with "everything has a voice over" made me sad. But Alien Crossfire is by far my favorite Civ type 4X. Glad to see you've brought it light for more people.
I don’t know but I’ve been told Deidre’s got a network node! Likes to press the on/off switch dig that crazy Gaian witch! Remember it perfectly after all these years.
So many stories from this game . Built a planet buster for the first time. Launched it against the University and they shot it down. It was supposed to end the war!
Alpha Centauri on GOG - gog.la/BeyondEarthSupportGroup
Patches and Multiplayer Instructions - pastebin.com/X3br4PvH
THE LIST - docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_K3ziSxT9zcUUGCddS4sF1uNJTWHSbOwB1CQX2Rx4Uo/
For the next video, I have to break a commitment. However, a broken pact for a better product is always worth the trade. - CEO Nwabudike Morgan, Datalinks
MandaloreGaming nice dude, love your work! Any interest in doing Torment: Tides of Numenera anytime in the future?
Cool! Thanks for the video and for the links Mandalore! BTW... Gothic 2 Night of the Raven review. WHEN? You can't just leave us with only the first part reviewed! That's unethical.
Have you ever considered going back and talking about DayZ mod and/or the Dayz Standalone? What if I gave you money?
Maybe sins of a solar empire? its more recent, but its a game that had lots of potential that sorta just fell by the wayside
Pathologic 2 could use some publicity for sure, I'm pretty sure there's only one "critic" review on Metacritic still.
Very good video.
This is not a sponsored message.
Have my child
what's up MandaloreTzeentach
Dr. Mandy and Mr. Sseth
Stop double posting on your video mandalore
hello mr Sseth please marry my waifu
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master." So many years later and I still remember that quote.
Same. This is one of the more powerful ones.
@EpicZantetsuken lmao you lost
It's applicable!
"Learn to overcome the crass demands of flesh and bone..."
I sit in my cubicle, here on the Motherworld.
When I die, they will put my body in a box and dispose of it in the cold ground.
And in all the million ages to come, I shall never breathe, or laugh, or twitch again.
So won't you run and play with me, here among the teeming mass of humanity?
The Universe has spared us this moment.
"Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you."
Right in the nostalgia man.
Ragebrew I wish he wouldn’t talk about us like that.
Back when games made you feel bad for stopping, instead of reminding you that youve been playing for 15 hours already.
I had that sound clip set as my Windows shutdown sound for a long time.
Wait, Surviving Mars got that from Alpha Centauri ??
"Please don't go. The diggles need you. They look up to you."
I remember this one hit me hard back then
"You are the children of a dead planet, EarthDeirdre, and this death we do not comprehend. We shall take you in, but may we ask this question: will we too catch the planetdeath disease?"
Lady Deirdre Skye, "Conversations With Planet"
Only when my Orbital Drop Fungicidal Formers*4 finish mass production...
@@danghostman2814 You fool! You take all the bonuses to fungi production and make bombs that plants fungi! Then bomb enemy bases, watch their production and population plummet, conquer, and then boom, you have instant best yields in the game!
Some of that game's writing was memorable.
"I sit in my cubicle, here on the motherworld. When I die, they will put my body in a box and dispose of it in the cold ground. And in the million ages to come, I will never breathe, or laugh, or twitch again. So won't you run and play with me here among the teeming mass of humanity? The universe has spared us this moment."
Anonymous; Datalinks
@@Yootzkore Some of these quotes are sickening awesome.
We welcome you, EarthDeirdre and earthwheat and earthtree as honored guests, for you add great power to our ancient song - planetfungus and planetworm and planetmind sing and play here, and you are welcome among us.
"I think, and my thoughts cross the barrier into the synapses of the machine-just as the good doctor intended. But what I cannot shake, and what hints at things to come, is that thoughts cross back. In my dreams the sensibility of the machine invades the periphery of my consciousness. Dark. Rigid. Cold. Alien. Evolution is at work here, but just what is evolving remains to be seen."
-- Comissioner Pravin Lal ,"Man and Machine"
We've already touched on that a little bit. I don't understand what is created now, either artificial intelligence, or artificial intuition, or something like thalamus between different consciousnesses of people.
Richard Baxton piloted his Recon Rover into a fungal vortex and held off four waves of mind worms, saving an entire colony. We immediately purchased his identity manifests and repackaged him into the Recon Rover Rick character with a multi-tiered media campaign: televids, touchbooks, holos, psi-tours-- the works. People need heroes. They don't need to know how he died clawing his eyes out, screaming for mercy. The real story would just hurt sales, and dampen the spirits of our customers.
"Mythology for Profit", Morgan Stellartots Keynote Speech
That’s one of the most memorable ones for me.
Clickityclak I saw the profile pic and got really confused about wtf I wrote then realised that wasn’t me
If this is a game mechanic then im Buying this game...
Please, tell me its a mechanic in the game.
@@5xg378 It's event dialogue from the game... Is it really that hard to figure out?
@@rcmmntsbd4813 having 0 knowledge of the game aside from this video,
Yes it is.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
That video needs to be updated with images of prominent Silicon Valley companies.
Citation needed - Pravin Lal
honestly it feels like there are more reasons to deny someone access to information like not wanting someone to see your search history.
@EpicZantetsuken looks like most governments are enforcing tyranny than.
@@thelitmango6333 Bingo.
That montage of Alpha Centauri and Beyond Earth voiceovers made me feel that in SMAC even the "Do you really want to quit?" dialog had more personality than the Beyond Earth leaders.
Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.
Those drones are probably like the NPCs from that meme today.
@@Nonamearisto Thats EXACTLY what drones are. Drones are the uneducated, unthinking worker class. If you provide for them, they will provide for you. Make your cities dystopian hellscapes, and they will react accordingly.
The Drones will miss you.
You, that's what drones crave!
The Scottish sailor man doesn't even offer an "Ahoy!" instead of a tepid hello there
I'm always pleased when someone recognizes how good a job this game did with Miriam. Fundamentalism wouldn't be half so powerful if was always stupid. I also love her quote (from the Information Networks tech, I think), "Evil lurks in the datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear. But it was never the streets that were evil." A reminder that it isn't the technology that's inherently problematic, but how humans choose to interact with it.
Also, her being annoying is a great way to engage you in the game.
@@ivanjelenic5627 The problem with Miriam is that she sucked - maybe some patches buff her, but I remember her to be notoriously underpowered. So often did she fail to live long enough to see the techs to which she lends her voiceovers...
@@Eliastion Miriam is actually very strong, but it requires an in depth knowledge of the game mechanics- if you spam a LOT of cities, playing to her ethos in spreading everywhere, she can amass a military and research powerhouse in the techs she needs: warfare. Belief modifier adds +25% flat to all your attack rolls. Then you go marching on others. For things you can't deal with? You probe team. Probes probes probes. Eventually once you get air power you win, because flight with basic Needlejet w/ no armour but like an Impact Gun allows you to fight stuff two times more advanced with belief. In an open contest of battles w/ same morale, same tech (or even slightly lower tech) and industry Miriam wins unless it's Yang early.
Also one thing I forgot to mention but it's very easy for Miriam to make like hive cities of her own. A Colony Pod can join a base and attach itself without needing Hab Complexes or Domes, if it's fed well w/ good rainfall and farm tiles at the west side of a mountain with condensors to terraform the east-uncultivatable desert parts of the mountain she can (along with Morgan, which I think does this strat better) make megacity complexes to feed her infrastructure. Pretty funny to see these big cathedrals with 25+ people and a scattering of other cities feeding into it.
@@TheKnightOfSmite Well, I'm not going to deny min-maxing strategies - I probably should have specified that I was talking about playing casually against AI. PvP balancing of Miriam might be good or she could even be OP, but I would never know, since I've never seen her in PvP and - on the other hand - playing against AI you just have fun and do what feels fun instead of min-maxing for the optimal performance.
And so my most typical approach used to be a pacifist Diedre spending ridiculous amount of time and effort playing house with swarms upon swarms of brain-eating monstrosities, looking proudly as the boils (always captured, never produced) grow big and strong. I mean, aren't they just the cutest?
And still people declared vendetta on me, for some reason. Can't they just let a girl play with her pets in peace until she's ready to merge her brain with fungus?
But I digress. The point is - AI Miriam had a bad habit of dying fast more often than not.
@@Eliastion Ah yeah, Miriam in the hands of AI either snowballs and then stagnates, or just gets immediately eradicated
The best faction in the hands of the AI every time is Yang
"People need heroes! They don't need to know how he died clawing his eyes out screaming! After all, the real truth would only hurt sales, and dampen the spirits of our customers."
Best quote ever!
Pog
"I sit in my cubicle, here on the motherworld. When I die, they will put my body in a box and dispose of it in the cold ground. And in all the million ages to come, I will never breathe, or laugh, or twitch again. So won't you run and play with me here among the teeming mass of humanity? The universe has spared us this moment."
Anonymous; Datalinks
That's a really good pickup line.
@@elFulberto Actually... as pathetic as it sounds, I was planning to use it to propose to my ex. I seriously believe it _IS_ that good :P
@@milczyciel is that why she is ex now
@@Nnothingg- Hah - good one :D But sadly no, it was nothing that interesting.
@@milczyciel i was expecting a juicy breakup story i am disappointed i can guess its the we were so long together we just stopped caring type of thing
I always played as the University so the Believers and I always got into it eventually. I loved Sister Miriam Godwinson though. She was a perfect foil to my state's 'do anything in the name of science and technology.' Twenty years after buying the game, I still think about the quote she gives on a special project: Some would ask, how could a perfect God create a universe filled with so much that is evil. They have missed a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all? It's stuck with me all these years.
The two of them are basically direct analogs for 2 characters in the RedMars trilogy, also in the prologue to SMAC their is a some clear sexual tension between Miriam and Zarkov.
Well, Miriam also hates Deidre....
I always liked playing Miriam for the challenge and because everyone already hates her and I plan to antagonize the whole world with my probeteam skimships! :D
The original unpatched version was an off-the-hook wargame too.....
Alpha Centauri was a true gem in the industry: a paragon of writing and voice acting that remains a major source of inspiration to this day. Its core strengths have stood the test of time.
There's a great repository of fan fiction on the Alpha Centauri 2 online forums for those who are looking for new fan-produced content. Factions, quotations, characters, etc.
I read the manual and strategy guide before playing the game. I *loved* the writing. But when I heard the quotes read, I actually didn't think the production lived up to the potential of the writing. Especially Lal, but also more generally. I don't know whether it was the actors or the direction.
When even the Quit Menu is a character
The drones need you.
They look up to you
@@GgjKi0 that's so true! :DDDDDDDDDD
@@Ahmadabdal_ benis :DDDDDDDDD
“As the writhing, teeming mass of Mind Worms swarmed over the outer perimeter, we saw the defenders recoil in horror. ‘Stay calm! Use your flame guns!’ shouted the commander, but to no avail. It is well known that the Mind Worm Boil uses psychic terror to paralyze its prey, and then carefully implants ravenous larvae in the brains of its still-conscious victims. Even with the best weapons, only the most disciplined troops can resist this horrific attack.”
- Lady Deirdre Skye, “Our Secret War”
@joethepro36 well... The canon version of events involve Gaians actually beating the shit ot of Spartans.
So... Nope, they are not just the harmless hippies..
I forget exactly how, but you can do this in game too without affecting by creating large mind worm stacks and releasing them into your enemy territory as neutrals. Very devastating.
@@MaskJackal100 yeah the way to do this is with a fungal missile. If you drop a fungal missile in the middle of their territory before attacking the outer edge it would keep them from mobilizing, and then if you chose ultra green ethics you could just grab them once you reach the bombing site.
@The Jester - Fool Of Hearts Get this, the 'Mary had a little lamb' bit, a maybe intentional reference to Babylon 5 where it's a refrain used to resist the intrusion of psi corps.
That's some quality cross-pollination.
For all their hippy aesthetic, I was surprised how eagerly the Gaians would resort to biological warfare as early as possible.
There are two kinds of scientific progress: the methodical experimentation and categorization which gradually extend the boundaries of knowledge, and the revolutionary leap of genius which redefines and transcends those boundaries. Acknowledging our debt to the former, we yearn, nonetheless, for the latter.
I wish they'd HD remaster this game so I can run a version of it that doesn't feel ancient.
One of the first strategy-horror games.
Strategy Horror? How novel
Civ 4 has a mod called Planetfall, which is a conversion for SMAC.
Strategy-horror? How is that possible?
@@steampunkastronaut7081 Homeworld Cataclysm: Am I a joke to you?
@@steampunkastronaut7081 The environment are barren because the planet is alive and trying to purge you from its surface, it sends you visions at certain stages. The random aliens that attack your cities are basically its immunologic system, and they are mostly swarms of flying psychic worms that make people go crazy.
_“It is every citizen’s final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people.”_
- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, “Ethics for Tomorrow”
This part was borrowed from Frank Herbert's "Hellstrom's Hive". The human hive from Alpha Centauri is very similar to the society Herbert describes. It's a fun book though not nearly as good as Dune.
Yang Gang represent
I see no red flags
Mostly because I'm colourblind
@@HubertInHell every book after first one is worse
and then you have books written by his son
@@HubertInHell It's also pretty similar to the whole water-recovery thing the Fremen did in Dune.
Not a single mention of the 300 page manual this game came with? man you could beat someone to death with it.
Do Dwarf Fortress next
He already did on his second channel.
ebin
@Khaffit yep. hope one day we will stop making this fucking joke
@@lurighashandarei1318 someone is moody over a good joke
@@lederp1182 What joke?
Old PC CG cutscenes like these look odly charming to me.
I thought i was playing classic C&C when I saw them
there is something neat about seeing what creativity could do with such limited hardware resources
“Indigenous Life Form Detected”
*explosion
40k in a nutshell
Suffer not the Xenos to live
not enough chapels
Megumin is that you?
Correction: Human history in a nutshell
@@theguardian8317 Correction: European history in a nutshell
9:30 "Maybe Miriam will stop talking shit"
Yeah, that's not gonna happen.
Aravanus a chairman can dream
Me playing Gaians: Silly Mirian, theres a god, and i know him (believers get drownd in mind worms boils) See?
Miriam always pisses me off whichever faction I'm playing.
@@sagua85 It|s a trick...to make you play as her!
She starts making sense in the late game.
"The Academician's private residences shall remain off-limits to the Genetic Inspectors. We possess no retro-viral capability, we are not researching retro-viral engineering, and we shall not allow this Council to violate faction privileges in the name of this ridiculous witch hunt!
"
-- Fedor Petrov, Vice Provost for University Affairs
-- blurb text for retroviral engineering
And we certainly did not fund gain of function research
@@Mnnvint Just like the guy who said, "We have never sought to become a Monopoly", wrote a book called The Centauri Monopoly before that secret project.
@@HadzabadZa The fact that covid appeared in Wuhan, and Wuhan just so happens to have a bio lab with biosafety level 4, i.e. the highest?
A coincidence, of course.
"Eternity lies ahead of us and behind. Have you drunk your fill?" Love how everyone remembers the quotes. It's a really smart game, makes you think. I had this game as a kid but fell in love with it when I replayed it in college. The controls are fine if you use the numpad to move your units. One of the best PC games of all time IMO.
Agreed.
I have a keyboard with no numpad and when I went to replay it recently I got the BIG REGRET.
My favourite one
@@samuelsmith9582 I feel your pain. This actually happened to me around the time you posted that comment, and it made me buy a separate usb numpad. I actually thought the extra mobility of being able to place the numpad anywhere as its own unit would make it a better alternative than the traditional layout. A year later, and I've found the opposite is true (for me at least) and it's still no good substitute for it being integrated as part of one whole keyboard.
"The final duty of every citizen is to go into the tanks and become on with all the people."
Chairman Sheng-ji Yang - Ethics of Tomorrow
Man, I think I played this game far to often. This was a masterpiece.
Soylent Green is people. We get it. And "it is every citizens' final duty."
This one's based on Hellstrom's Hive.
Alpha Centauri vs Beyond Earth is the perfect example of Soul vs Soulless
You really couldnt have a better comparison.
Something something modern Star Wars games vs late 90's Star Wars games!
@@Grubnar Plebbit
@@Grubnar
>star wars
>basic product created using the refined monomyth blueprint
>to suck most money imaginably possible
>soul
a.k.a.
Creativity vs. Pandering to millenials with money to spare
"If i wanted to see china fighting over rocks i'd watch the news"
DUUUUUUUDDDEEEEEE.............
Land is the one thing they ain't making more of, unless you're China!
Am I the only one who thinks that ability to create land is pretty cool one? It's like from 4X game ^^
It's always "mine" with those bastards. Poor Scarborough.
@@ImperativeGames ya, you don't need boats, you just raise land so you can invade your enemies with hover tanks instead.
HEY HEY HEY
Those africans worked hard for those rocks.
You damn well know which quote is coming in droves because its a damn good one:
"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
"
-Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"
Also nice jab at Resetera, fuck that place.
Colonel JD is rolling in his grave.
yea, probably one of the best quotes in the game , its 100% on spot
What's so bad about ResetEra? I've never been but at a glance it seems like a normal gaming forum.
.
@@nocommentary1954 It's the same people who thought neogaff was a little too offensive for them so they decided to make it the safest most non offensive forum besides r/politics.
I like to imagine that while Alpha Centuari is turning into a nuclear blasted hellscape with war, Earth got back on it's feet and is now a paradise world that any citizen of Alpha Centuari would kill to be on.
LOL
Well that's ironic
Earth : Goes to hell
Unity Project : TO ALPHA CENTAURI!
AC : Goes to hell
Homeward Project : TO EARTH!
Earth, just becoming nice again : Goes to hell
Ark Project : !@#$ IT, TO SPACE!
Space :
Space :
Space : goes to hell
This is actually a cannon in the game.
"What actually transpires beneath the veil of an event horizon?
Decent people shouldn't think too much about that."
- Academician Prokhor Zakharov,
"For I Have Tasted The Fruit"
Did you just flip a coin to decide between Gork and Mork? I heard a ding.
He does seem like the cunningly brutal type if im honest, good choice
Me here just heretically waiting for one of the names of the Four to be spoken by great Mandalore himself...
and he goes and chooses an Ork god smh
@@Benebazsi cunningly brutal or brutally cunning? i can never make up my mind
Yes
I saw Mandalore as one of dem weirdboyz. Not anymore.
Both Civ 2 & Alpha Centauri expects you to use the num-pad for unit movement. Hence why it's so cumbersome to move with the mouse, that's not what the devs intended you to use.
Good choice on the 40k god though.
This, today you can forget the numpad exists, but once you get used to it it's the best way to move in that game, and can be faster than the mouse too!
Numpads are good for precision.
@blackrave404 I'm not saying that it's perfect. Ideally the mouse would have been just as viable as the numpad, and the numpad would have been a bit more intuitive. It does make sense that they went with numpad controls though, that was the "standard", set by Civilization 1. Looking back, we can say that it might not have been the ideal way of doing things, much like we don't think that the DOOM controls were ideal if we go back to that, but without people "knowing better", these controls made sense.
Also the numpad will only work if Num Lock is turned off.
More of a Mork man myself
Pathologic 2!!!! Yeah boiii
He's gonna go crazy for sure this time
This is what am waiting for
15:35
Awww yeah!
After the first one, I have to see what depressing mind bending stuff lies ahead.
@ Oh my.......
Aw, I remember how excited I was when I learned Beyond Earth was coming out and then how bummed I became when I tried it for the first time. The video sums up my frustration with that game perfectly. Very polished game, but no soul.
Yeah, it still frustrates me how shallow they made and then stopped the development because it plummeted (duh, they thought people would've buy that junk) when all they had to do - was to follow the damn formula they had all along on the form of SMAC.
It was that simple and yet they failed to it with all their resources and budget.
Try Pandora: Eclipse of Nashira. It more like Alpha Centauri.
Unit workshop wasted 😢
i used to watch my parents play this game when i was a child (and was briefly scared of grid patterned floors bc what if there are mind worms when i try to stand on some of the squares)
as i got older i got to play myself and still have a poster of the tech map
it was interesting to have different factions to match each of my family's play style; my dad always chose spartans, mum chose gaians, and i went with the university
smac will always have a place in my heart
As a kid I sat on my dad's lap and he explained how the game worked. He was so patient that when I got to play I often asked him what I should do each turn. Eventually our hotseat games progressed and we'd ally against Miriam mostly (lol). He played Lal and I mostly played Zakharov or Deirdre. I started developing tactics he never thought of, like manually patrolling mind worms as the Gaians to hunt other worms for planetpearls (energy) and to convert more of them passively, buying small bases to act as footholds to launch attacks from, and the interesting applications of the terraforming in the game to land-bridge or sink cities. I love my dad for sharing this game with me so much and giving me a passion for strategy.
@@ArcNine9Angelyou still play with him?
oh gosh talk about an awesome game to grow up with!!
Good lord, I love this game so much.
Father, tis you?
So what changed?
Is it game devs become incompetent despite having access to previous creations' successes and failures? I think not. It just that publishing companies earned so much money off of developement companies' creations that they bought them.
Result is EA, Ubisoft, Activision etc. Banality of people in suits reign supreme over artists and engineers and the results simply show their tyrannical stupidty and greed
@@Raren77 A big part of the shallowness and copy/paste quality to modern game's mechanics is the ridiculously ballooning time investment need to make and animate all the high graphical fidelity assets. The engines back then were graphically simple, but powerful for enabling the designer's imagination, and allowing quick implementation of features. The size of dev teams now is much larger, and they work insane hours, yet games are released without the same ambition or polish I used to expect
@@Raren77 Hey, some of those who stood as indie game developers managed to make memorable games that towered anything those big companies ever made. A good example is Undertale. That thing was made with Game Maker and Paint, lol
@@steampunkastronaut7081 Yeah, I know and wholeheartedly agree. I was talking about mainstream studios, which created many classic unprecedented games than sank to the level of creating gambling games with the actual game is a mini-game as a side hustle.
Btw, I remember writing this but I don't think I wrote this in reply to someone saying "Good lord, I love this game so much." What's going on here...
"Technological advance is an inherently iterative process. One does not simply take sand from the beach and produce a Dataprobe. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. Each minor refinement is a step in the process, but then we got Beyond Earth instead of Alpha Centauri 2." - Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, 'Looking Sid in the Eye'
Thanks to all the members of the mercantile guild generously uplifting these videos. You're all truly wonderful. Have a good one.
The voice actors/actresses and incredible writing, the gameplay loop, the simple graphics... everything is amazingly good in SMAC.
I don't know but I've been told
Deirdre's got a Network Node
Likes to press the on-off switch
Dig that crazy Gaian witch!
i catch myself singing this once in a while.
Spartan legion - march!
YES SIR!
clever!
@@TheRmm1976 It's one of the tech blurbs from the game...
Seeth is on his meds again. Great review BTW
Wow epic and funny joke!
@@megacrane833 I'm a sarcastic, snide person. I read this sarcastically and snidely. But it's text, so anybody can bring their own head voice and completely reinterpret your meaning!
Are you sarcastic? Are you serious? The world can never know!
@@haydentravis3348 the joke is bad and you shouldn't post it again
I don't know wht everyone whines about the Doctor Mandalore and Mister Tzeentch memes but I hope that Allah smites them and they don't get a good night's sleep
*Sssevfv
Wasn't expecting a Warhammer Fantasy reference in this.
Mandred Skavenslayer was the Emperor who killed all those Skaven, by the by.
Man I thought his name was something Skavenslayer but I wasn't sure off the top of my head.
And RIP Bretonnia too.
And he was killed by Rat Ninjas
How could he do that if there are obviously NO SKAVEN!
@@Davesknd shut it, you man-thing
I remember asking my parents to buy this when I was 9 because the box looked so neat
years and years later I've yet to play a game that has left such a profound impression on me
HUMAN BEHAVIOR IS ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR. THE PARTICULARS MAY VARY, BUT COMPETITION FOR LIMITED RESOURCES REMAINS A CONSTANT.
growing up and in my first philosophy class, random lines from the Nicomachean Ethics and Critique of Pure Reason suddenly bubble up again
at work I now have all my shortcuts and wallpapers ripped from the AC Secret Project icons.
"HUMAN BEHAVIOR IS ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR. THE PARTICULARS MAY VARY, BUT COMPETITION FOR LIMITED RESOURCES REMAINS A CONSTANT." "Need, as well as greed, have followed us to the stars, and the rewards of wealth still await those wise enought to recognize this deep thrumming of our common pulse."
I'm so happy I can still quote that from memory.
Fun fact, several of the Secret Projects actually contains clips from 1992's Baraka, the Dream Twister being one of them, also Baraka is an experience everyone should try.
Absolutely gorgeous film, or kind of a cinematographical experience. The 2011 "sequel" Samsara is definitely worth a watch too.
hell yeah. I think my avatar says how much I loved this game.
Miriam probably commits suicide with her followers by walking through a psi gate which isn't attuned to another gate on the other end.
The Irish? Why not chose a sentient leader?
@@Memelord-md5hs The Virtual World is a specific early game wonder. They merged with the planet's consciousness for real (in-game), not part of a simulated reality.
@@Nonamearisto na its what happened in the books final book everything goes to hell, and the mindworms win essentially
I don't know what "Nerve Stapling" really means but something tells me I don't really want to.
They never really say what Nerve Stapling actually is, but it's apparently so horrible that every faction considers it an atrocity. In game, it will automatically end a riot and apparently cause irreversible damage to your population's psyches. In one of the books, when it was revealed that the Hive faction leader kept his people in line with regular nerve stapling and would also nerve staple any captured enemies regardless of affiliation, every other faction declared war on the Hive and wiped them out.
The implications are not good.
Dunno, sounds pretty obvious. You get your nerves stapled with a chip, like in all those conspiracies telling goverment staples everyone and everyone is essentially a marionette, etc.
As for how it would look like, well, closest would probably be the soulless people from dragon age (excommunicated mages), just brainwashed as well.
Ouch.
@@banger_land I'd say it's some sort of pleasure/pain response, Since it becomes less effective the more it's used and causes psychological damage (Which could be gaining a dependance on whatever the thing puts into your brain, Or maybe being traumatised by the pain it continuously brought you.)
The act of nerve stapling is essentially putting nodes in parts of the brain that manage pain, then you activate it and essentially put the person through so much pain they become essentially a mindless drone/puppet willing to listen to the regime to avoid pain
However eventually the effects dampen, and they gain a tolerance against it which is why continually nerve stapling the population begins to stop working as much
@The Jester - Fool Of Hearts there is a role playing game!?
The factions were really the best thing about Alpha Centauri.
They know that, hence why the faction leaders are in the cover of the game.
Even the first time you build a building you get a quote, it's awesome. I love this game for all of those moments.
In your veins runs iron made from the heart of a long-dead star. Such does the universe love life.
- Samatar Jama Barre, "This Is Not Exile"
Really goes to show how older games tended to be more ambitious, even with limited hardware. Granted, budget and time restraint are still present, but modern gaming seemed to take a backseat approuch to anything bold or new.
thats because its takes longer and is more expensive to do the same thing - in a way, advances in game tech holds everything back. Of course, this is only true in AAA, and indies/"indies" outnumber them anyway. You could ignore AAA and still never have time to play everything you would enjoy playing, most of it doing something interesting with a much smaller dev and pub budget.
You should look for Terra Invicta
Why would you? Just take a formula and refine it a bit and boom, you got a game that adds nothing new but is bought by everyone. Making something entirely new is a risk, one that many corpos are not willing to take
Risks of Flowering: considerable. But rewards of godhood: who can measure?
-Usurper Judaa Marr, "Courage: To Question"
I loved the aliens, but they were overpowered.
You pretty much have to crush them immediately as they will always turn on you.
I think that was the point. The idea was that the alien factions hated on each other and would counteract each other. Not great in practice, but cool in theory.
@@NauticalInsanity I hear with the AI Growth mod, this has been rectified via careful balance.
"Gentlemen, forget what your courtesans have told you: size does matter!"
CEO Nwabudike Morgan
Morgan Industries Annual Report.
Morgan is my favourite faction. Exploit everthing for profit and live in luxury. Sustainability? Whats that? Alpha Centuari lets you solve all your problems by throwing money at it, and morgan excels at making money. In the actual game he is also the most peaceful out of all the factions since he benefits the most from making friends and trade deals.
So you're telling me he makes money as much as the Broken Lords in Endless Legend?
>Sustainability? Whats that?
Another leftist buzzword that they use to push ideas and solutions that don't work? You know, as they always do?
Loquacious Lobster Lapidary It‘s just a game chill dude, bring this somewhere else.
@@GurniHallek In the context of Alpha Centauri not pursuing sustainable enviromentally friendly practices means the ecology gets pissed and sic swarms of psychic brain eating worms at you, or worse.
@@GurniHallek Sure, let's ignore the data we about It, let's end up like we know we may end up. Dabbing on 'em lefitsts right?
>favouring Gork
>not Mork
Get a load if diz git!
Kaza ddum MORK IS BEST!!!!
We'z shud giv 'im a gud Krumpin', aye?!
Remind me which one is which please
The only game that I've played that felt as though it came even close to the depth of variety and setting to SMAC was Endless Legend. It's a far different genre (high fantasy) but there's many of the same elements - The factions are incredibly varied with strong personalities, what little writing there is really helps flesh out the setting and how crazy it gets, and the planet itself is a major plot and gameplay element in its own way - the planet is dying, and we miserable monsters are scrabbling to try and be the ones in control of our fates before it finally ends.
I love the small touch at the end; when asked which Warhammer god is his favorite, you can hear him flip a coin to decide between Gork and Mork
Beyond Earth is one of those games I wanted to love so bad, I tried so hard.
But alas, it just couldn't be.
Try play it with Codex Mod overhaul. Its 1000.000% better (still not AC thou).
Likewise. I tried it on a free weekend, played maybe 6 hours of it, and it just wasn't engaging. I didn't play it enough to know why, but I think Mandalore here does a good enough job. Beyond Earth has no character.
That's literally how I felt about Alpha Centauri AND Beyond Earth. I just don't get it.
Ohhh! YEs!!!! If Alpha Centauri had Beyond Earth's graphics, Ui and soundtrack, it would have been a perfect game! Also.....Pathologic 2!
Ramiel Personally I’d rather just have it’s controls, The normal graphics of Alpha Centauri are pleasing to me for some reason (Despite the fact I’ve never really played it)
@@sceerane8662 They take time getting used to, honestly, I had to literally force myself to play it at first. This is one of those games, that get better and better the more you play it, but in the beginning, it's difficult in all the sense of the word...
@@sceerane8662 Better UI, Control, and map Animations. I can play Civ 3 easily, Alpha Centauri is much harder to play though despite obviously being the better and more fun game.
Don't trust this guy, he blew up a sbarro's in 2007, my 3 sons were killed in the explosion.
The Sbarro's deserved it, and so do your sons for eating there
jag sbarro?
your wife's sons
No shit? I went to school with Jimmy Sbarro! The whole Sbarro family lived on 93rd street! Right around the corna!
Wtf is wrong whith you
At 8 years old I picked up this game at a TJ Maxx because I liked the boxart. The quotes from this game, along with its setting, still haunt and fascinate me to this day.
The original AC faction leaders brought a really profound element to the game. Often you’d want to play as a specific leader because of their personality or their ideology, just as much as the bonuses or perks that their faction provides. And their ideology was couched very simply in the leader’s specialisation and ambition, which made total sense in the narrative.
Then the new human human factions show up in the expansion, and I’m just like,
“Lol, what a bunch of freaks!” XD
An obsessive hacker whose entire diction is a futuristic street dialect. A man temporarily turned into a simpleton by a fault in his cryo-chamber on the Unity. Catherine Zeta Jones -Sorry! I meant, Aki Zeta Five, who accidentally turned her mind into a pre-sentient algorithm. And the child born in the xenofungus is NOT the messiah! He’s a very naughty boy!
I loved all of it! 😂
(Almost everything I suggest was probably beyond the engine and development time restrictions.)
Narratively, the expansion factions would work if, under certain circumstances, they spawned some time after the initial Planetfall. IIRC the GURPS sourcebook actually said this was the case, at least for the Data Angels. They would have a niche after the initial factions develop to the point that they need a data broker. Pirate faction only makes sense after maritime trade (and those pressure domes) develop. Aki Zeta Five would make more sense after some cyborg tech is researched. Story of her developing revolutionary algorithm by harnessing Unity's computer during the interstellar journey could be kept, but she keeps it hidden and makes a faction out of it only after some additional hardware/wetware becomes available. Free Drones can spawn if drone riots are expanded so they could become an actual rebellion in repressive factions. Can't think of much for Cult of Planet, maybe they spawn as reaction/countermeasure for attempts to completely remove xenofungus?
The alien factions should be Stellaris-style endgame crisis with actual superior alien tech, limited by their minuscule numbers.
Core problem with this system is that you could not choose to play as any of the expansion. At least at the start.
@@Xazamas the Planetfall mod for civ4 does exactly that. You even get the option of playing as the expansion factions when they spawn!
@@Fuzbutt3 I actually played the mod a bit, ages ago. Left out that part because only thing I could remember for sure is that "Cult of the Planet" spawned when you complete a specific Secret Project.
@@Xazamas ahh that makes sense. I never built that wonder because all the pollutive/terraform options seemed so much stronger to me. Oddly enough they always declared war on me, I wonder why :)
Hey sseth, just here to say how much I appreciate the hard work you do for us all, you're truly wonderful!
He's really good at changing his voice.
Wrong channel bruh
@@m0n4rch911 right channel
Drag to move??? AS IF!!! [this comment brought to you by numpad gang]
Hahah exactly !!
@@eval_is_evil I yelled NUM PAD! in the video at that point.
"My favorite god in 40k?"
*coin flip*
"Gork"
It still is my favorite 4x game I've played. There is so much lore and character as you play. It really goes beyond just solid mechanics.
Fun fact: the Dream Twister footage is from the film Baraka which I didn’t expect to see here
Nice thing is that both Brazilian Characters you showed are speaking Spanish and not Portuguese. "Colonel" "Bien Venido" as a Brazilian my eyes roll to the back of my head
There's a reason for that, in Beyond Earth. In the game lore, there is no more Brazil: Brazil unified with the rest of South America in one big country, that has a mixture of portuguese and spanish. If you look for that faction's leader name, you will see how they blended both groups.
And the term colonel is in english, not spanish, as is the title of every other character in alpha centauri. The chinese inspired man is called a chairman, not the chinese equivalent.
Brasil doesn't matter outside football, do it's okay sopa de caccao, uma delicia.
@@almostontimehero5415 The fact you had to come and make this comment makes me sad for your life.
@@Alexeiyeah Chairman Mao?
Unironically one of the best games I have ever played. Better lore than any
Melt the ice caps. Always. And if that ain't possible, Planetbuster missiles.
Follow up with needlejets. If problem persists throw more needlejets at it until it stops.
some people just want to watch the world burn
Eh, why?
@@VideoAmateurLuxembourg To fuck over anyone who doesn't already have a water base and built near the coast.
Спасибо людям, ответственным за субтитры не только к этому видеоролику, но и к большинству, - если не ко всем - на RUclips-канале Мандалора. Большое спасибо!
I recall trying to eliminate the native life tiles to ruin the built in plot. It caused an immense amount of mind worms to spawn. I enjoyed getting fifty attacks in a turn. 😃
Hey hey people, Mandalore here
never gets old
*sarcasm*
I didn't expect that kind of Inquisition!
One day they should swap channel for one vod, for shits and giggles
Let's be honest, I see Alpha Centauri on a video in 2019, that's an autoclick.
This is it for me, the best game ever made. Brian Reynolds and the old Firaxis team built a masterpiece. I don't know of any other game that can so effectively make you ponder the hard questions that humanity has always been asking itself, and encourages you to read further philosophy. The hard tech, the quotes, the personalities, the story... I have to actually force myself not to install it again because I'll probably not play anything else for the next year. Awesome review man. BTW: numpad for movement!
yea this game can take you over easily, i lost countless nights on it
I can't believe Nwabudike Morgan is an immortal memelord.
The only bad thing I remember from this game is that once you had figured out the right way to develop, the AI couldn't keep up in any games. Now that might be somewhat true for all games but even as a kid who probably didn't min-max everything properly I found that to be particularly true in Alpha Centauri
Non-linear mathematics... For! The! Win!
God I love this game. one of my favorites. those quotes echo decades afters playing. its so bad that I hear Yang's quote from the The Virtual World secret project whenever I am in pain.
Yesss this is my favourite 4X game. Thank you much for reviewing this.
Beyond Earth is one of those titles which really squanders its potential. I like the visuals and fluff (as a whole), but it's so poorly represented in the game. That said, looking deeper, even the individual fluff seems... generic. The Protectorate is supposedly religious, the only specifics we get are from a single devotional quote mishmashing several mythologies together, the rest being bland pseudo-philosophical chaff.
That said, the Russian guy's quote about "Morality is measured by the progress of our work. A machine whose works bring us more progress is more moral than a lesser machine." amuses me greatly. Just... what?
At least Age of Wonder: Planetfall has the decency to embrace its silly side and give its factions more personality.
Even worse a sequal was Masters of Orion 3, Moo2 was brilliant, Moo3 was trash
@blackrave404
The Luddites were right though. If all of the fruits of the increased productivity goes to the mill owners and bankers, then that's just more oppression.
I don't want to go all an-prim, but the discussions coming from Latin America surrounding the concept of "buen vivir" are fascinating.
That quote actually makes a lot of sense, even if I do not 100% agree with the philosophy I can see how someone would believe it
It's all baffling word salad written by someone who thinks they are a lot smarter than they are.
@@pearz420 No, it's not. It makes a lot of sense. If you view progress as what's morally right, then the moral machine is that which brings the most progress.
Whilst this review shows you quite clearly have much love for this game and enjoyed playing with it, and that loves leads me to watch this video once again time to time to simply remember the young days of watching my father play this and my own failure of playing it as a youngin', I do have to remark on one thing: The controls are not poor. You are just using the more... inadequate version of it if you ask me. The mouse is great for long commands but if you wanna give more precis commands you use what they designed the whole grid system around, the numpad. This game got the age of being able to be played 100% without a mouse and can sometimes be a much easier option than using one. Just wanted to say this as that little fact could veer some from this gem.
Yeah, I agree. I've been playing this game on the train on a tiny laptop with only a touch pad and keyboard for years, and it's really easy to control once you get used to it. I also don't know why he said you had to memorize all the hotkeys. The right click menu is so great, you can access every command you'll need without having to memorize anything.
Nobody noticed how he sneaked Shammy in: 14:14
I really liked that :D
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
In all honesty, the sound clip that sticks with me the most is when I go to quit and the narrator says "Please don't go. The Drone's need you. They look up to you!" Classic.
An excellent presentation of a still excellent, if cumbersome, game ! I fail to understand why Firaxis never released a remastered version of it. For people wanting an Alpha Centauri experience somewhat more modern, a mod for Civ IV exists : Planetfall. It's not a perfect conversion of course, but it captures the original's game spirit quite nicely.
Alpha Centauri was a game that really blew my mind when it came out because manipulating a game environment wasn't really a thing with the exception of like Magic Carpet on the PS and later Black and White. The fact you could just up and customize units as extensively as this game could makes this a breakthrough game that I still come back to every few years and enjoy.
This is my favorite game of all time. It was great to hear someone talk about it again.
AC is the best Sid Meier's Civilization game.
Fight me.
@@sloo6425 I second this motion.
come on Put 'em up! Put 'em up!
Fight you? Do you SEE my channel icon?
Civ 5 will always be the best imo, even if i like a lot of things that AC has to offer (especially the changing enviroment).
Why would I? I agree.
This game has been so important to me, ever seens i eagerly showed my very confused friends a pirated copy in middle school, 20 years ago. I honestly got a bubbling of nostalgia tears when i heard some of these voice overs.
The voiceovers for the techs were able to convey so much character and philosophy in just a few seconds (both by taking some amazing quotes from historical figures like carl sagan and friedrich nietzsche, and some rather impressive original writing), and the secret projects were just amazing little pieces of art (fun fact, the scenes that were not CGI were taken from the film "koyaanisqatsi", which i highly recommend).
And to this day i still have them all half memorized. The fate of Recon Rover Rick, clawing his eyes out from mind worms. Charman Yangs "what do i care for your suffering? Pain, even agony is nothing more than information fed to the computer of the mid", and the end game bonus tech with its simple "eternity lies ahead of us, and behind. Have you drank you fill?" read in "Planets" haunting, which still pops into my mind at random times.
Thanks for the vid man, good to go on a feels trip. Hopefully someday they will do a revival worthy of this amazing game.
To me, it's not just a video game, it's a philosophical treatise
Just gonna sit back and listen to Mandalore talk. Even though this is like my 6th tome through his catalog
Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri is a game I have, and love... but mostly to watch. As this was and is a game my father play often and plenty. And I end up watching him plenty of times. Which have made me realize you did not know of one thing. Whilst it doesn't alleviate the overall hud problems, movement is a lot better than what you said. You gotta use the Num Pad though as a 8 directional arrow key setup. This allows a lot more control of your units movement, and feels overall more fine tuned. My father used this method only for most of his units, simply doing the order for "go here" if he knew it would take some time or was a very long way away. But the man played the game so much that even now, through his stroke and all, he memorized all the hotkeys. And overall I just love that you let it show to the world how great of a game it is :) For it truly is.
One of my top 3 tbs of all time. I got it as a kid by my mom (didnt even know the game existed back then) and I was so immersed in this game. That fat booklet that came with it was so cool ,stories ,technical data...great times
Hey hey people, Mandalore here.
I just want a crossover one day...
Sseth referenced Mandalore on his latest Might and Magic video, while Sseth was a collaborator in Mandalore's Gothic 2 review.
Won't happen. They are the same person.
Already announced on the the ralph retort
But all memes aside, Mandalore did not review Gothic 2. Sseth did.
@deus vult when did that happen?
You put out the most informative and relaxing videos on my sub feed. I take you for granted. Thank you for the great content, best of luck
It's crazy how much this game has in common with SMT Strange Journey despite being so different in most ways
I literally just started playing SMT, could you explain more?
Two seconds in and I already want to replay this. My favorite game of all time.
"Maybe Miriam will stop talking shit"
Ah, yeah...
No.
You didn't go with the network node when going with "everything has a voice over" made me sad. But Alien Crossfire is by far my favorite Civ type 4X. Glad to see you've brought it light for more people.
I don’t know but I’ve been told Deidre’s got a network node! Likes to press the on/off switch dig that crazy Gaian witch!
Remember it perfectly after all these years.
"The Yang gang must be purged"
*_AWYISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS_*
So many stories from this game . Built a planet buster for the first time. Launched it against the University and they shot it down. It was supposed to end the war!
Ideological weirdos who hate you just for existing? I wonder what that feels like...
Hey hey thats age of empires 2 music
I really wracked my brain for a few minutes! Havent played that in 20yrs I think?