# Alpha Centauri



## Joel007 (Nov 22, 2006)

Ok, I've got this game, its great, but I have 2 problems.
1) I can't get it to see any games hosted anywhere on the internet, LAN works fine. Is there some kind of tool or website you need to host and join online?

2) The expansion pack, Alien Crossfire, looks nice. However i can't find it on shopping sites for less than £180. This looks pretty stupid considering the original game cost me £5. 

Anyone else played it?


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## Joel007 (Nov 22, 2006)

Well, i've found a solution to the second problem  you can download the expansion for free at Home of the Underdogs - Entry: Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire
quite a cool website, its even got the classic win95 games i used to play!
ah, good times. 

anyway, multiplayer help?


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## BetaWolf (Jul 29, 2013)

I was searching for a thread to discuss Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. I played it a lot in college, and it had a subconscious influence on my SFF writing it seems. The science was really well done AFAIK and some of the sound bytes are still floating around in my head. Gems like:

A brave little theory, and actually quite coherent for a system of five or seven dimensions -- if only we lived in one. 

Once a man has changed the relationship between himself and his  environment, he cannot return to the blissful ignorance he left. Motion,  of necessity, involves a change in perspective. 

And of course when you quit the game: 

Please don't go. The Drones need you. They look up to you.

****

I'm wondering what the influence of this game has been on science fiction and science itself since 1999. Any thoughts for anyone who has played the game?


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## rcdemoral (Oct 27, 2013)

What I do remember about the game was the excellent writing and voice overs for when you researched new technology.    Leonard Nimoy, no?

I should fire it up and get some inspiration for my own SF works.  I'm actually getting a fair bit of inspiration from Endless Space - a 4x type game like Master of Orion.  Have you tried it?


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## Dozmonic (Oct 27, 2013)

I just played it from a gaming point of view seeing as it was civ, but different. I did enjoy the unit customisation


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## Overread (Oct 27, 2013)

Bit of a blast from the past with this thread! Though for any interested in the game and its expansion you can get it now, legally from GOG - Good Old Games. A great site for anyone to get hold of older games


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## bright (Nov 5, 2013)

Overread said:


> Bit of a blast from the past with this thread! Though for any interested in the game and its expansion you can get it now, legally from GOG - Good Old Games. A great site for anyone to get hold of older games



Oh, you are right. There are so many cool games.


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## Thadlerian (Nov 6, 2013)

"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, but just what is evolving remains to be seen." (Pravin Lal on Neural Grafting)

Easily the most chilling view of the future I've seen. This game deserves massive credit for its very well designed tech tree and its insights.


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## Boaz (Apr 3, 2014)

AC was awesome.  It was a spooky game.

Some of my favorite quotes are...

"What goes up…better doggone well stay up."

"Organic Superlube? Oh, it's great stuff, great stuff. You really have to keep an eye on it, though--it'll try and slide away from you the first chance it gets."

"A handsome young cyborg named Ace,
wooed women at every base.
But once ladies glanced at,
his special enhancement,
they vanished with nary a trace."

"Get off my land, you peacekeeping son of a _____!"

(On teleportation.) "The first living thing to go through the device was a small white rat. I still have him, in fact. As you can see, the damage was not so great as they say."

"I loved my chosen. How then to face the day when she left me? So I took from her body a single cell, perhaps to love her again."

"The Academician's private residences shall remain off-limits to the Genetic Inspectors. We possess no retroviral capability, we are not researching retroviral engineering, and we shall not allow this Council to violate faction privileges in the name of this ridiculous witch hunt!"

"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."

"Some civilian workers got in among the research patients today and became so hysterical I felt compelled to have them nerve stapled. The consequence, of course, will be another public relations nightmare, but I was severely shaken by the extent of their revulsion towards a project so vital to our survival."

"I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even five hundred would be pretty nice."

In the game all you had to do was keep Pravin Lal from getting elected and be the first to research Orbital Insertion.


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## Karn Maeshalanadae (Apr 6, 2014)

I don't really care so much for Sid Meier's strategy games, simply because they're turn-based. Alpha Centauri was alright, as things went, but I never really got anywhere because I was the militaristic group and I allied with the religious group, the business group, and the environmentalists. And I also seemed to have had the job of keeping them from each other's throats. Ugh. I only knew I couldn't take them each on my own.


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## Dozmonic (Apr 12, 2014)

Official Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth Announce Trailer - "A New Beginning" - YouTube

The next installment in the Civ series looks to be a sort of Alpha Centauri 2


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## dekket (Apr 13, 2014)

The trailer for Beyond Earth looks good.


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## Pwaa (Jun 25, 2014)

Can't bleedin' wait for Beyond Earth.  Loved Civ 5 and mixing that with sci-fi seems like a sure bet to me.


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## Silas Wulf (Jul 3, 2016)

"As the Americans learned in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
- Comissioner Pravin Lal, UN Declaration of Rights

I really enjoy Beyond Earth, but I prefer Alpha Centauri


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## Ray McCarthy (Jul 3, 2016)

Silas Wulf said:


> Alpha Centauri


I've got AC, and never played it yet. Wasted many happy hours with CIV II, CIV III and CIV IV. I download the patch for XP.


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## Silas Wulf (Jul 3, 2016)

You will waste many happy hours playing AC, especially when designing your units(because that's a thing in AC)

The demo for Civ IV was the first 4X game I ever played, and have since put over 2000 hours into Civ V


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## reiver33 (Jul 3, 2016)

I'm still playing it at the moment. I usually go for the University (so I can wimp out and make 'donations' to the other factions who strong-arm me), but I'm currently playing the tree-hugging Gians (and planting trees).


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