Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

About Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (1999) is Firaxis Games' science fiction 4X game and spiritual sequel to Civilization, in which seven ideological factions colonise the planet Chiron as the world itself awakens to sentience.

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri in Depth

Picking up where Civilization's space race ends, the UN colony ship Unity reaches Alpha Centauri in the 22nd century, but a reactor malfunction wakes the crew early, cuts contact with Earth and leads to the captain's assassination. The leaders on board form ideological factions, and as the ship breaks up, seven escape pods land on Planet: Deirdre Skye's environmentalist Gaia's Stepdaughters, Sheng-Ji Yang's Legalist Human Hive, Prokhor Zakharov's University of Planet, Nwabudike Morgan's capitalist Morgan Industries, Corazon Santiago's militarist Spartan Federation, Miriam Godwinson's Lord's Believers and Pravin Lal's Peacekeeping Forces. Planet's native xenofungus spawns mindworms that attack bases, and a voice begins invading the player's dreams, warning against pollution and terraforming, until it emerges that Planet is a dormant hive organism nearing a metamorphosis that would destroy humanity.

Played from an isometric view, it reworks Civilization II's bases, facilities, secret projects and research, but technology unlocks unit components so players design their own units. Players terraform the land, allocate energy between research and reserves, adjust their faction through social engineering, send probe teams to sabotage and steal, and negotiate in the Planetary Council. Victory comes through conquest, a three-quarter vote, cornering the Global Energy Market or the Ascent to Transcendence, as humanity joins Planet's metamorphosis.

Making Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds, designers of Civilization and Civilization II, made it after leaving MicroProse to found Firaxis Games with Jeff Briggs. Electronic Arts released it and its expansion, Alien Crossfire, which added five human and two alien factions, in 1999, and Aspyr and Loki ported both to Mac and Linux the following year. It improved on Civilization II's engine with simultaneous multiplayer, social engineering, climate, customisable units, native life, more diplomatic and spy options, more ways to win and greater moddability. It received wide acclaim, scoring 92% on GameRankings and 89% on Metacritic, and was compared favourably to Civilization II, with praise for its writing, voice acting, custom units and deep technology tree, and it won several game of the year and strategy game of the year awards. It sold over 100,000 copies in its first two months, was the tenth best-selling US computer game of the first half of 1999 and reached 281,115 US sales by September 2000.