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[Fikes]

I would say Alpha Centauri is better than any Civ game. It stands the test of time just fine too, with only a handful of features you will miss from the newer games (such as how airplanes are handled). Even if you don't think those games are that great, buy it and play it on easy. The special project videos and in game quotes are worth the price of admission. Period.

[KaelGotDwarves]

I'm pretty sure I've spent more time on SMAC than almost any other single game, except maybe Guild Wars.

[Sordid]

The DOS games come with preconfigured dosbox, never had any trouble with those.

Well actually I got Dungeon Keeper off GOG and I had to tweak the config to make it run decently. It ran fine in the default low-res, but in high-res it was insanely laggy. I just used my default config (with everything on "auto") with it and that improved performance dramatically.

[Xinvoker]

I bought Creatures 3 on gog.com and I'm currently playing it. No nostalgia involved as I'd never played it before. To be honest, I'm having more fun connecting the various machines than breeding the Norns themselves, although I haven't gotten the Splicer machine yet. I'd rather breed my super-norns than modify them with the genetics kit, feels a bit like cheating.

[Taricus]

Just a bit of advice with SMAC, apparently there's some entries for SMAX factions in there.

[KaelGotDwarves]

Out of any videogame enemy, I have never joyously obliterated anyone as much as I gleefully enjoyed annihilating Miriam of the Lord's Believers.

[umiman]

Out of any videogame enemy, I have never joyously obliterated anyone as much as I gleefully enjoyed annihilating Miriam of the Lord's Believers.

Really? She's the most sane out of all the leaders though.

And for a religious faction she seems to be pretty moderate... especially compared to the planet tentacle lovers.

[Wravburn]

I played the hell out of SMAC, had some trouble running it later, so it faded out. I never played Alien Crossfire though, am a bit disappointed it isn't added. Guess I'll have to have some more patience.

[olemars]

Just a bit of advice with SMAC, apparently there's some entries for SMAX factions in there.

Uh, what exactly does this entail?

[Taricus]

That they either had to take it out or they used a version that had SMAX installed. It's the facedit file the loose entries are in.

[Wravburn]

A quick search on the GoG forums gives the following :

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/sid_meier_s_alpha_centauri_/expansion_included/page1

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/why_no_ea_expansion_packs/post75/?staff=yes

Apparently there are no EA expansion packs available yet:

An official answer?

"We know that you guys want the expansion packs. We're doing what we can, but can't comment on anything right now. Rest assured we'll let you know anything we do as soon as we can."

That means the vanilla games were published before the talks about the expansions were finished. You can judge that depending on how jaded you are.

[KaelGotDwarves]

Out of any videogame enemy, I have never joyously obliterated anyone as much as I gleefully enjoyed annihilating Miriam of the Lord's Believers.

Really? She's the most sane out of all the leaders though.

And for a religious faction she seems to be pretty moderate... especially compared to the planet tentacle lovers.

In the datalinks she disdains her own people as serfs to be used as religious pawns. In the manual which included a backstory of the Unity breaking up and assassination of the Captain, she was painted as nearly clinically insane. Miriam didn't give a shit about the possibility of the remnants of humanity dying a horrible fiery death - it was all God's will. I'll tell you what though, she really believes she's doing god's work. My attitude towards her isn't helped by the fact that she'd declare vendetta on me, University or Gaia, every game for being blasphemers.

Yes, nothing is black and white in the SMAC universe but Miriam really pushes it.

Lal/Peacekeepers is the only guy that can be generally painted as the 'good'/sane guy. He's the one that sacrifices his love so that the Unity could split safely and get all the ungrateful assholes down to Planet. He's constantly jewed by the fact that he has to be the now defunct UN on a new planet.

Also, canon-wise, Dierdre/Gaias brutally crush the Spartans with mindworms, and it's widely believed that Santiago and perhaps Yang had a hand in killing the Captain and sabatoging the mission as they viewed the other factions as too weak.

I seem to remember as the Gaians start Transcendence by merging with the consciousness of Planet, Zhakarov starts losing his shit. 

The backstory is actually really cool and I recommend anyone interested to hunt it down.

[Taricus]

Hey, the cyborgs were never evil

[KaelGotDwarves]

I didn't follow too closely the canon after SMAX, but the Cyborg faction was after freedom from the oppression of humans, so depending on the means - I believe her datalinks quotes were more about AI consciousness and civil disobedience to humans.

[kg333]

Out of any videogame enemy, I have never joyously obliterated anyone as much as I gleefully enjoyed annihilating Miriam of the Lord's Believers.

Really? She's the most sane out of all the leaders though.

And for a religious faction she seems to be pretty moderate... especially compared to the planet tentacle lovers.

In the datalinks she disdains her own people as serfs to be used as religious pawns. In the manual which included a backstory of the Unity breaking up and assassination of the Captain, she was painted as nearly clinically insane. Miriam didn't give a shit about the possibility of the remnants of humanity dying a horrible fiery death - it was all God's will. I'll tell you what though, she really believes she's doing god's work. My attitude towards her isn't helped by the fact that she'd declare vendetta on me, University or Gaia, every game for being blasphemers.

Yes, nothing is black and white in the SMAC universe but Miriam really pushes it.

Lal/Peacekeepers is the only guy that can be generally painted as the 'good'/sane guy. He's the one that sacrifices his love so that the Unity could split safely and get all the ungrateful assholes down to Planet. He's constantly jewed by the fact that he has to be the now defunct UN on a new planet.

Also, canon-wise, Dierdre/Gaias brutally crush the Spartans with mindworms, and it's widely believed that Santiago and perhaps Yang had a hand in killing the Captain and sabatoging the mission as they viewed the other factions as too weak.

I seem to remember as the Gaians start Transcendence by merging with the consciousness of Planet, Zhakarov starts losing his shit. 

The backstory is actually really cool and I recommend anyone interested to hunt it down.

I've read the backstory originally published with the game, describing the events prior to Planetfall, and Yang, Miriam, and Santiago are definitely cast as the villains in that.  However, I think umiman may have been referring to later on in the game.  Miriam seems to be the only one asking about the ethics of the super-technologies that the other factions accept nearly without reservation (Bulk Matter Transmitter comes to mind).  Lal expresses concern during the Mind/Machine Interface tech, but still uses it, and seems as easily blinded by his UN mandate as Miriam does early on with her religious dogma.

Being able to effectively relate or refute almost any of the factional philosophies is one of the reasons I like SMAC so much, though, and part of why I've never had much interest in the expansion.  The original was a beautiful balance of current human philosophies each pushed to just slight enough of an extreme to make it easy to like or dislike each one on personal preference.

KG