Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri/Gameplay

This chapter is a guide to all Civ and Civ-related games. Therefore every guide will include this chapter.

The goal of the game
The precise goals of the game vary from game to game. For instance, in Civilization, there are two ways to win: launch a spaceship to Alpha Centauri, or destroy all the other nations. Every Civ game has equivalents to these two goals, and more. For instance, the Transcendence victory in Alpha Centauri corresponds roughly to the spaceship victory in Civilization.

As in chess, the game is divided into several phases and the ultimate goal of the game should not distract you from playing each phase properly. Checking the king without purpose is useless in chess, as is making empty threats for no reason other than to make threats in Civ. In both games, an empty threat may or may not be effective, but for it to be truly effective it must have sound reasoning behind it, and if it does not work it must not punish the player who made the threat.

Cities and production
Cities always produce three resources. These are usually named food, shields, and trade. In SMAC, these are called nutrients, minerals, and energy, respectively. In Civilization III, "trade" was renamed "commerce". In Civilization II: Test of Time, the names depend on the current game being played. Regardless of their names, they always serve the same function. For consistency, we will refer to them as food, shields, and trade.

Your cities are populated by citizens. They will work the surrounding terrain and produce goods. They also must be kept content or the city may experience civil disorder. When a city is in civil disorder, no goods are produced other than food. (In some games, rush-building during disorder is impossible, as well.)

These are the three kinds of goods that your cities will produce:
 * Food - No civilization cannot survive without food. Food will accumulate until the food box is full. When it is, another citizen will be added to the city. Each citizen requires two food per turn to survive. A citizen will never take more or less than this. If the city is not producing enough food to meet demand, this food will be taken from the food box. If the food box is empty and a citizen still must eat, a citizen starves and the population count will be reduced by one. The population count will never be reduced by more than one due to starvation.


 * Shields - A city must procure raw materials (shields), which can then be used to build things. Your city will always be working on one of three kinds of projects:
 * Unit - Build a miltary, Settler, or Worker unit.
 * Improvement - An improvement to benefit the city, or a Wonder to benefit your entire civilization or even the entire world.
 * Capitalization - Shields are converted to trade, usually with a heavy penalty (e.g., one trade takes four shields).


 * Shields are added to the shield box (except in Capitalization). Shields are never removed from this box. When the shield box is full, production is complete and the unit or improvement is immediately available.


 * Trade - Every civilization has some form of currency or barter system. You tax this trade, and the tax goes into at least one of three things:
 * Tax - The taxed goods become money in your pocket. You can use it to rush-build or use it as part of a trade with another civilization, or even give it as a gift.
 * Science - The taxed goods go toward improving scientific research.
 * Luxury - The taxed goods go toward entertaining the populace, keeping them happy.

Expansion phase
The first phase of any Civ game is the expansion phase. Each civilization tries to stake its claim to as much territory as it can, possibly even knocking out a rival with a "rush" if possible. The details of this will differ from game to game and from player to player. For instance, in Civilization II, many players will place cities as far apart as necessary to avoid overlap, four squares being roughly optimal, while the same player may place cities extremely close together in Civilization III (sometimes even two squares apart, or one square apart in extreme situations). All games share a need to constantly produce colonizing units (Settlers in most versions, Colony Pods in Alpha Centauri).

Diplomacy and the meta-game
The term "meta-game" when applied to Civ diplomacy was possibly first proposed by Velociryx, one of the acknowledged masters of Civilization-style games. It is difficult to define this concept precisely, but it refers to idea that diplomacy is a game in itself, with its own rules and strategies, particulary in the way that three civs can interact with one another.