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. Civilization terminology is used here; see Civ:Terminology.

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. Most of them have 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 correctly. 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

All Civilization games have cities. Alpha Centauri refers to them as "bases", but they serve exactly the same function. The primary function of a city is production. The secondary function of a city is acquiring and holding territory. By acquiring territory, you reduce your enemy's possibilities for production. Therefore, an unproductive city can still be very useful, but a productive city will almost always be more useful. The ideal city serves both functions.

Good city sites

The details of what constitutes a good city site depends on the game. For instance, in Alpha Centauri, high elevation is desirable. However, most other Civilization games have no concept of elevation. What they do share in common is that different terrain will produce different resources and have different defensive capabilities. Therefore, what makes a certain site desirable is always the same: an abundance of resources and an ability for the city to defend itself.

Resources 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 functions. 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. Each citizen may work one tile; the city tile is always worked automatically. For instance, a city with 6 citizens can work up to seven tiles: the center tile plus one tile per citizen. Citizens can also be specialists and not work tiles; this will be discussed later.

These are the three kinds of goods that your cities will produce:

• Food - No civilization can survive without food. Surplus food will accumulate until the food box is full. When it is, another citizen will be added to the city and the food box will empty. (In some Civ games, an improvement, usually called the Granary, will cause the box to be only half-emptied in this case.) 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. In some Civ games, Settlers units need support in the form of food from their home city in addition to the shields they need for support. In these cases, if the food box empties and more food is needed, the most distant such unit will be disbanded. If more food is still needed after that, then a citizen will die. The population count will never be reduced by more than one per turn 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 unit, such as a military unit or Settler.
  • 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., four shields is converted to one trade unit).

Shields are added to the shield box (except in Capitalization). When the shield box is full, production is complete and the unit or improvement is immediately available. In most Civ games, but not Civilization III, cities that control units must expend shields in support of these units (however, in some circumstances a unit is "free"). If more shields are needed by units than are being collected in the city, then in Civ I a unit is disbanded, but in other versions the needed shields are removed from the shield box. If the box empties but more shields are still needed, one unit will randomly be disbanded. In most games, shields in the shield box can be destroyed by Spies.

• 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 or content.

Citizen happiness

For your cities to be productive, their citizens must be kept content. If the number of unhappy people exceeds the number of happy people in a city, the city will fall into civil disorder. Content citizens and specialists do not enter the equation. 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.) Some Civ games have nuclear power plants or other improvements that are dangerous to have in a city under civil disorder. Also, some Civ games have forms of government that cannot handle prolonged civil disorder (usually Democracy).

There are four degrees of happiness, from most happy to least happy:

• Happy
• Content (normal)
• Unhappy
• Angry

Specialists, such as entertainers, are always considered content. Angry citizens usually appear only after capturing an enemy city: they're loyal to their empire, not yours. SMAC does not have angry citizens, having Drones (unhappy citizens) serve both roles.

Research

Each turn of the game, you have a chance to accumulate research toward a "tech" (technology). Techs will grant you new capabilities, or at least the chance to acquire them later, and can be used as a trading item. The only circumstances you will not accumulate research are if you have no cities, your research rate is at 0%, or you have cities and a research rate but are not generating sufficient trade in any cities to put taxes into research. The technologies always follow a hierarchy, called the "tech tree". Most Civ games have one huge tech tree, but Civilization III has up to four tech trees, one for each Age. All the games have extremely different tech trees, but they all share similarities. For instance, many players could not tell you the exact effects of "Electricity" for every single Civ game without looking it up (but good players will certainly know them for their favorite games). This is because the name of the tech may have little to do with its effects.

Choosing which tech to start researching is an important decision. It matters even more in the early game, as each tech usually takes many turns to research. Researching many techs early can trigger a game-lasting advantage. Whatever you do, make sure (except when at war sometimes) to keep researching down the path that your strategy is based on. You won't get very far in war against a much more advanced civilization.

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". The details of this will differ from game to game and from player to player. For instance, in Civilization I and II, a player might place cities as far apart as necessary to avoid overlap, four squares between cities, not including the cities themselves, being roughly optimal. In Civilization III, the same player might place cities extremely close together, with two squares between cities, or even one square in extreme situations. All games share a need to produce colonizing units as fast as practicable in the expansion phase.

Infinite City Sprawl

Infinite City Sprawl (ICS for short; "smallpox" in FreeCiv), refers to the strategy based on the concept that a player should have as many cities as possible to crank out hordes of cheap military units. In Civ1, this is marked by building many cities adjacent to other cities without so much as a space in between. This strategy was so powerful that in all other Civ games, it is illegal to place a city immediately next to another. So players started placing them with a one-square buffer zone in between. Civ2 did have some other countermeasures in place, such as having too many cities will cause unhappiness problems, but on the whole, using ICS was far more effective than not using it would be. Against a player already known to use ICS, the only real effective response was to also use ICS. Because this simplifies the game to an absurd degree and increases the tedium, many players hated ICS and players would usually forego their differences to gang up on anybody found to be using it. To this day, using ICS against human opponents in Civilization I or II is a serious breach of playing etiquette.

ICS as an "unbeatable" strategy came to an end by Alpha Centauri or Civilization III, although it can still be an effective strategy and many players will still use it, while facing much less hostility in response because the strategy is now beatable by other means.

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.

Warfare

No matter what you do, it's likely you'll eventually end up in a state of war with someone. Sometimes the warring parties are too far apart to actually engage in combat, and declaring war is mostly a token way of saying "I hate you". (Don't rely on that, though: sometimes they'll send in the navy or air force!)

Combat mechanics

The details of combat differ from game to game, however, all systems share a few things in common. For instance, every military unit has hit points. If a unit's hit points are depleted, the unit is killed in action.

Nuclear warfare

All Civ games allow the possibility of nuclear war. For instance, all Civ games have nuclear warheads, and Civ2 allows spies to detonate nuclear devices. (SMAC's retrovirus Probe Team action is similar to this.) Use of a nuclear weapon usually has the following effects:

• If aimed at a city, half of its population dies
• If aimed at a stack of military units, the stack is completely destroyed
• Surrounding tiles have pollution added, influencing the possibility of global warming
• Everybody will declare war on you (except in SMAC, where this happens only if the UN charter is in effect)

Using nuclear weapons is not recommended unless you either have a lock on the game and want to finish it more quickly, or are in such a desperate losing position that it is the only thing that may turn the tide in your favor.