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samedmunds · 3 years

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My litany thoughts on 1999 cult classic strategy video game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Alpha Centauri is a game of the early Civilization variety from the EA golden age and ranks very highly in my top ten. While you probably heard of it if you were playing video games around the turn of the century, I've found members of my age cohort to be tragically unfamiliar with this masterpiece.

Alpha Centauri is an unofficial sequel to Civilization II, a game where the only way to way to win is either completely eliminate all competitors to the last city or, rather more easily, send a spaceship loaded with colonists to the title star system. Shortly after leaving home, the ship loses contact with Earth, which would make sense to a player of Civilization II where the bonuses to science and trade from democracies evaporate when technology ends, upon which point all the AIs revolt and become militant fundamentalist theocracies and climate change rapidly destroys the planet, leaving the player with an endgame that is literally 1984. Either way, when the already strained ship arrives at the Alpha Centauri system an unknown partisan assassinates the captain of the UNS Unity and the population fractures into seven opposing factions before firing the colony pods and exploring an inconveniently hostile planet.

The player starts here, in typical Civ fashion: a scout, settler, and absolutely no technology to speak of. That isn't to say you are a bunch of primitives, all your units start out with some approximation to modern guns and judging by the amazing quotes and wonder videos your society is well beyond the 21st century--more on the story later. The gameplay is incredibly well-balanced in spite of its age and quirks (with the exception of the freight-train progression of Yang). Rapid early expansion as the bountiful Peacekeepers may leave you at serious risk to the relentlessly martial Spartans, who are in turn threatened by the uber-specialized technocratic University--but be careful to underestimate the backwards Lord's Believers, their probe teams will just as quickly rob you of your gains. The Morganites can afford to sparsely defend their home if they're willing to pay off their aggressors, but they'll struggle expand over great swaths of territory without irking civil unrest drone riots from corruption. Meanwhile the Gaian Acolytes can harness the permanently-dangerous mindworms to great effect from the beginning of the game. Yang just... builds. And keeps building, and next thing you know he's conquered the Peacekeepers and turned Miriam into nothing more than a puppet and where are all these cruise missiles are coming from?

In short, the strategic design of this game is nothing less than a work of art, but that isn't to say it doesn't have its anachronisms. The User Interface has taken its inspiration from early versions of Microsoft Word and it rapidly pays off to know the hotkeys. The wonder videos are resolution locked and can sometimes cause problems depending on your display configuration. The unit creation system is simultaneously wonderful and horrendous. It allows me to create special long-range nerve gas bombers that eradicate cities shortly before orbitally-dropping specially-trained garrisons to quash all resistance. On the other hand, if you do not accept the cumbersome slew of computer-generated options, keeping your new weapons systems up to date with your latest technology (especially when playing as Zakharov) rapidly becomes a chore.

That said, there are a variety of features in the game that I think deserve to make a reappearance in the Civ Games. The pick-your-government system is incredibly balanced and fun to roleplay. You can't get away with crimes against humanity when solar storms hit in Civilization VI, nor can you weaponise climate change to flood your rivals cities, or strategically terraform to alter weather patterns and deny your neighbors arable land. At the bare minimum, we should be given the option to nerve staple rebelling cities when our control runs out!

All that said, there is also the story to contend with. One is at first tempted to think that a 4x strategy game with a marked emphasis on replayability would necessarily have a tacked-on story, if one at all. After all, the point is for the player to create it through their actions, not have it spoonfed to them. The majority of what you learn about your world that isn't printed in numbers and small pictures on the mapscreen is through blurbs that accompany each discovered technology or new building. The aforementioned wonders even have their adorable early-CG renderings, sometimes mixed in with some experimental film footage. There are occasional interludes that describe the mindworms and machinations of Planet, but the bulk of the wordage comes from epigrams of the faction leaders and the occasional bit of Nietzsche or Plato. It's so good that I can't help but stop and listen to CEO Nbwadibuke Morgan ramble on about supply chain economics or Sister Miriam's apocalyptic warnings every single time. Take some examples.

Proper care and education for our children remains a cornerstone of our entire colonization effort. Children not only shape our future; they determine in many ways our present. Men and women work harder knowing their children are safe and close at hand, and never forget that, with children present, parents will defend their home to the death!

--Col. Corazon Santiago, "Planet: A Survivalist's Guide"

Or perhaps, a more on the nose one:

"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!

--Fedor Petrov, Vice Provost for University Affairs Accompanies the Retroviral Engineering technology

The game often doesn't directly tell you what Retroviral engineering is, nor does it labor to explain just what having someone nerve stapled means, or the precise function of the Recycling Tanks, but through its quotation it beautifully circumlocutes the world you are shaping--and being shaped by. It really never pulls any of its punches, even if its just on Organic Superlube--great stuff--and I still catch muself quoting it regularly.

Ursula LeGuin once wrote

"Science fiction is often described, and even defined, as extrapolative. The science fiction writer is supposed to take a trend or phenomenon of the here-and-now, purify and intensify it for dramatic effect, and extend it into the future. 'If this goes on, this is what will happen.' [...] This may explain why many people who read science fiction describe it as 'escapist,' but when questioned further, admit they do not read it because 'it's so depressing.'"

Alpha Centauri is absolutely extrapolative fiction and very firmly rooted in the 1990s and I love it. It was released in the Aaron Sorkin TV, pre-9/11 days where the word Internet was more often than not followed by the words, "is like an information superhighway" and it absolutely no efforts are made to cover it up. The main factions are a cross-section of the New Millenium's hopes and anxieties. A New Russia that went a very different path before Putin took over, a cheerful clan of ruthless Western capitalists hellbent on putting Morganvision on every network set, a group of vaguely Scottish free-love peaceniks hellbent on defending the most-of-the-time incredibly hostile environment. There's the Second-Amendment preaching Spartans or the optimistically-influential UN which, judging by its naming scheme for its bases, seems to dedicate entire cities to bureaucratic agencies. The All-American Christian fundamentalists don't entirely butt heads with the frighteningly powerful Human-Hive (if your country calls their cities names like "Huddling of the People" and "Paradise Swarming" you might not be the good guys). The expansion also brings in more dynamic characters like the Information Wants to be Free! data angels Brian Reynolds very clearly came up with after watching Swordfish and Hackers back to back or the Nautilus Pirates who have no right to be as fun as they are.

The visions of the future are at once both anachronistic and prophetic; while elements may come off as cheese, I see it as a sort of window to the past, a way to examine what was once (and sometimes still is) on our mind. All in all, I give Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri 4 out of 5 stars and a definite all-time favorite, warts and all. You can pick it and its expansion up for $6 on Gog.com and play it through a built-in emulator that works for most systems. If you're willing to brave a dated interface and an older-fashioned gameplay style, I would definitely recommend it.

#pc gaming #video games #gaming #civilization #writing #ursula leguin #alpha centauri #sid meier's alpha centauri #sid meier's civilization #the drones need you #they look up to you #game retro #game recs #game review

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