Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is a video game created by Sid Meier and Brian Reynolds for Firaxis Games in February 1999.

Plot

The game Alpha Centauri is about the colonization of a new world, which they call "Planet", by the human race (represented by different factions) who escape from Earth and fight to dominate it. they are destroying it. The game system is very similar to that of the Civilization series, although it is worth noting the manufacturing of units, which are developed in a modular way, and the concept of social engineering, novelties that were not added to the later Civilization III.

The game is characterized by a complex and well-developed plot. A United Nations ship, "Unity" who travels through space towards Alpha Centauri (one of the endings of Civilization I and II, when a spaceship is built and sent to colonize another world, winning the space race) suffers a breakdown after 40 years of travel and its occupants are They wake up from cryogenic sleep prematurely, causing a series of tensions and confrontations that end with the death of the ship's captain, and finally causes its occupants to separate into 7 different factions. Upon reaching planetary orbit, each faction seizes one of the planetary landing and colonization capsules and they descend to the planet at different points on its surface, losing contact between them and starting a fight for the resources of " Planet" at the same time defending their territories and researching and growing to achieve the ultimate goal of dominating the planet.

Factions

The factions are not divided by their race, but by their ideology or their way of seeing life, and that will affect how they will function on the Planet. These factions may make treaties of friendship or alliances, but they are likely to end up in competition with each other. Each one of them has very defined profiles:

The Human Hive (the Hive) (Orig. in English: The Human Hive.) Leader: Chairman Sheng-ji Yang. They base their organization on the denial of individualism and some communist principles. They live huddled together in their hives with a high growth rate, but they hardly value human life.

The Stepdaughters of Gaea (the Gaeans) (Orig. in English: Gaia's Stepdaughters.) Leader: Lady Deirdre Skye. Ecologists and green lovers.

The Peacekeeping Forces (the Peacekeepers) (Orig. in English: Peacekeeping Forces.) Leader: Commissioner Pravim Lal. The loyalists of the UN, whose leader is the greatest diplomat of all time.

The Spartan Federation (the Spartans) (Orig. in English: The Spartan Federation.) Leader: Colonel Corazón Santiago. Militaristic and aggressive, they receive bonuses in the battles they undertake.

The University of Planet (the University) (Orig. in English: The University of Planet.) Leader: Academician Prokhor Zakharov. The University, whose fundamental and only reason is scientific study and progress, experiments with everything without any ethical constraints, which causes the population to rebel against them with some frequency.

Morgan Industries (the Morganics) (Orig. in English: Morgan Industries.) Leader: Executive Chairman Nwabudike Morgan. Representatives of the wildest capitalism.

The Believers of the Lord (the Believers) (Orig. in English: The Lord's Believers.) Leader: Sister Miriam Godwinson. The Sister and her sect are religious fanatics who organize themselves through a theocratic regime.

Game mechanics

The game is very similar to Civilization, only set in a futuristic environment, so the trailers and units are almost completely new. It has identical functions, and is based on the same principles: found cities, research technologies, create military units and be the first to innovate discoveries. Factions would be equivalent to civilizations in Civilization and mind worms (neutral beings that will attack cities and units if sighted) would be equivalent to barbarians from the aforementioned game. There are also rebellions in the cities (depending on various aspects) and it is possible to transform citizens into specialists that drive scientific research or the economy. A new unit, the terraformers, work like settlers, transforming the planet's soil, irrigating it, fertilizing it to improve crops or creating roads and various improvements, but they do not have the ability to create bases (equivalent to cities), having a specific unit for this purpose.

A very new functionality is the customization of the units through an editor where they can be adapted within a few parameters, specifying elements such as the type of armor, the motor by which they are propelled, the special abilities (which can have up to 2), amphibious capacity, etc. "Secret Projects" that will give bonuses to the bases or units of the faction that builds them, speeding up research, bonusing unit defense, etc., being their analogues in Civilization the wonders of the world.

Another novelty regarding the Civilization games are the videos/animations for the completion of the "Secret Projects", playing them when the user-controlled civilization finishes a "Secret Project" and narrating a short story related to it.

It was fully translated into Spanish and has numerous quotes (voices) from the protagonists (the leaders of the factions).

He who denies you the right to information, because at the bottom of his heart he wants to be your master

Commissioner Pravin Lal, UN

Reception and criticism

Alpha Centauri received a host of awards from trade magazines, including "Best Strategy Game of the Year" and "Best Game of the Year". But not all went to the game. Many criticized the excessive monotony of the landscapes that populated the planet where the action took place, which detracted from a certain versatility and charm compared to the classic Civilization that contained ice, forests, deserts and other types of land.

Expansions and promotion

Alpha Centauri was introduced to an expansion, Alien Crossfire, released in September of the same year, which added 7 new factions to the game including two alien races at war with each other who would arrive on the planet by accident but were join the colonization of "Planet" as new actors in the plot, although they have some goals and options that differ in some respects from those of the human factions. You can play only with 7 factions to choose between the 14 (7 original and 7 new).

In addition, as part of its promotion, two small free books were published that explained the background of the game: the colony ship, the accident that caused the death of the captain and the separation of the crew into different factions according to the way of understanding the social organization. Given the success of these stories, four other books were published, these for sale to the public.

James Cameron's film Avatar appears to be based on the story behind the video game^{[citation needed]}: on the one hand, both the gas planet Polyphemus and its moon Pandora are located in the Alpha Centauri star system; on the other, the Gean ideas of transcendence and their struggles with the corporate factions reproduce a good part of their argument. Other references in the film lead us to the novel Space Troops, which also shares plot lines with this video game.