Was considering to get it, but after some reading on the game, I would rather wait to get it including the expansion. Hope GOG can make a good agreement with EA on it soon.

That's pretty much incorrect. SMAX was actually a great expansion. Vanilla SMAC is fine on it's own as well. SMAX added a lot of content which would have been nice to have on GOG initially, but it's certainly not 'broken' without it.

What a stupid remark. Maybe you could argue your point instead of making generalizing statements about another group of people you don't agree with?

People tend to glorify SMAX all over here (and elsewhere), but I have not yet heard a proper argument. (I have always thought SMAC was the conceptually cleaner of the pair but I admit I have only short experience with SMAX.)

So, what are the features that make SMAX superior to SMAC?

Here are some reasons to prefer SMAX:

1. Seven new factions.
2. New native life forms (fungal towers, spore launchers, sealurks).
3. New landmarks (Borehole Cluster, Unity Wreckage, Manifold Nexus, Fossil Ridge).
4. Tectonic and fungal missiles.
5. Multiple new special abilities.
6. Multiple new base facilities, including aquafarm, subsea trunkline and thermocline transducer. Those three facilities increase the nutrient, mineral and energy production of sea tiles, making sea bases more useful.
7. Four new secret projects.
8. Nine new techs.

There are some problems, IMHO, with the expansion, however. Brian Reynolds was not involved, so his touch is lacking. There's also an impression that it was "rushed out the door" without lots of testing. For example, some of the new factions are unbalanced (Aliens are too strong when played by a human, but weak when played by the AI). The Cloudbase Academy SP is overpowered. Finally, SMAX acquired a certain mystique, since it was difficult to find for long periods, I've played SMAX exclusively since it came out and wouldn't go back to SMAC.

All very good points on why Smacx is the better of the two... I personally have never understood everyones need to have all factions balanced.... I see Balancing as forcing a sameness on each faction. I love the challenge of playing a slightly less balanced faction.

(Edit note: This is more for the post above the one Quoted the one that Quotes that other forum). For someone to say that the expansion should never have been made is just wrong. If you don't like it, don't play the expansion. But don't just hate on it for no reason.

I applaud their decision to make 7 new different (and interesting) factions. I might even suggest that without the new factions added into the mix SMAC is a much more predictable game.

Not to mention the Faction Editor (a must have feature in my opinion for any serious player of this game).

@Petek

La these:
Some improvements of SMAX are very good, the rest (many) are bad or even very bad. The mix does not make it for a good game to me.

(I am no SMAX veteran so I may be wrong in some points. If so, please correct me)

1. Seven new factions.
This is the best feature of SMAX, I admit. Had it been done properly, I'm all in. The possibility to have random 6 opponent factions spawned make the game setup much more interesting. Pirates, nice idea, alien factions, great. Now, the probles: 1) they're unbalanced, some are very strong. Yes, as Vyeh said you may leave them to AI. 2) AI was not taught to play the new factions, not even the very basic things. E.g. pirates don't build nearly enough seaformers (incredible), alien factions can be wiped out super-easily with usage of [that extra ability that reduces pop with every attack]. So we have great feature, I'd say the best feature of SMAX which is half-finished.

2. New native life forms (fungal towers, spore launchers, sealurks).
This could be nice, but again, it is half fonctional. Alien units at times attack themselves (huh?) or don't attack your alien worms. Some of the units are crazily overpowered / underpowered. In one of my first games of SMAX, I landed near an alien faction. The guy immediately DoWed on me and about turn 40 walked into my territory with one of the giant units. It wrecked my whole faction in few turns. I reloaded my first save, pumped everything into units. That thing walked again all over my units. I reloaded twice more, retried the game (and no, I am not a SMAC newbie) without any success. Do you think this is normal for a strategic game? Is it balanced?

3. New landmarks
These are in SMAC 4.0 as well.

4. Tectonic and fungal missiles.
Fungal missiles, nice. Tectonic missiles? Are they serious? I could not believe my eyes the first time I saw this. Otherwise, I question the usage of these things, I guess they are hardly good for anything. (maybe in some special scenario). Cool, but useless for human player.

5. Multiple new special abilities.
Second (and last) good point of SMAX in my list, after the factions (which are so so). AI does not use them properly, but that was in SMAC as well.

6. Multiple new base facilities
Sea improvement facilities, not bad, although it makes sea too similar to land. In SMAC, sea bases are far from useless - I can't see how you can say that. They are fragile, but potentially very rewarding. I found that a great piece of design from Reynolds, Sea bases are an opportunity, but you need to protect them and feed them with units/minerals which is hard. SMAX erases the difference. Also - AIs don't build those facilites enough, do they? How surprising...
- And you somehow forgot all other factilities that are totally crap. I hate all those extra +Probe things. Anybody who played SMAC knows that probes don't need extra levels, you just run them repeatedly to make them elite. It's more fun as well.

7. Four new secret projects.
Cloudbase academy. Instead of doing something reasonable with unbalanced flight from SMAC they invented this.

8. Nine new techs.
Which one of them is useful? More of clutter things that enable more alien levels (boring and useless), more probe levels (see above).


Summa:
SMAX = lot of new content, 30% is good, 70% clutters the game.
SMAX's AI is abysmal, worse than SMAC's. It was not taught to work with the new content.

(In MP, SMAX can probably be superior to SMAC. In SP, I think SMAC is better in terms of clean, proper game desing with great spirit and minimum of useless parts of the game.)

Just another plug for SMAX ... I could see some purists hating it, but overall it just adds to the experience in my view.

I found Alien Crossfire on the whole a very strong addition to the game. There were, indeed, some problems with it that could have used a patch, but I've never regretted installing it nor thought the game was better off without it.

I'm surprised at the amount of people hating on SMAX. I've played through SMAC and SMAX thoroughly throughout the years, and can honestly say that SMAX, overall, brings up a better end of the stick than SMAC. Sure, it isn't perfect, and it has its flaws, but the upsides that it has brought alongside it far outweigh the negatives.

The fact that someone is also making an unofficial patch to fix many of the bugs and issues with both games (admittedly, SMAX gets the buggier end of the stick) is also a huge relief, and relieves many of the issues specific to SMAX.

Having better AI would have been nice, though.

It (rpgcodex) may seem that way at first glance, but if you take the time to dig deeper you'll find there's a lot of very knowledgable folk who post there - including quite a few game devs.

Yes, a lot of them a very synical (though usually with good reason) and the site is completely unmoderated*, so at times you need a pretty thick skin, but you can learn a lot as well. Their member reviews and especially the "Playground" (Let's plays) are some of the best you'll ever read.

Then again, if you though Fallout 3 was a good RPG and a worthy successor to the originals, you probably don't belong there. Although, that game is pretty universally hated by all hardcore RPG sites - not just the codex. They quite liked NV however.

Of course I've been a member there for years - so you probably shouldn't listen to me :-)

* - not actually completely unmoderated - just the mods allow pretty much everything (as it should be on the net).

I don't pay much attention to such things as "worthy succession", in my opinion Fallout 3 was the best attempt at the Fallout franchise Bethesda alone could make.
I'm not a fanatic of any sort of game, because that's ridiculous - these are just games. games are fun, fun is good. That's why I'm cautious when it comes to fanboys. This includes Fallout fanboys, who tend to idealize Fallout games, when they had lots of flaws and can't be regarded as perfect (even though I consider Fallout 2 as one of the greatest RPGs ever, I'm not a fan of the first one).

Right, EOT :)

Thanks for the insights, kyrub.

EA are probably the cheapest, money grubbing bastards in the industry. They hand out these old classics which they don't think they can get a dime out of anymore, give it to GOG unaltered and make them keep it that way and expect everyone to feel grateful. I know they will have the expansion on here but will charge another six bucks.

The AI in SMAC is abysmal. There's always at least one faction that would end the game with one base and no tech if you let it play out. When I'd land in the jungle I'd always immediately restart, because unless an AI lands there, there won't be any strong factions to contend with.

I'm nowhere near figuring out Civ III's max difficulty, haven't even tried it. Even Civ Rev is a tough play on Deity, and while AI has to cheat to make that happen, I'd rather have a cheating opponent that's a challenge than having a bunch of AIs just rollover and die when I glance at them. Planet forbid I break out a helicopter.

Despite that weakness, SMACX is one of the most beautiful gaming experiences I can think of. I'm eagerly awaiting the bundle here but won't buy SMAC alone. My last disc got destroyed and I had already given away my backup copy. It's so good, I'd rather pay $60 for an AI upgrade than to buy any other TBS on the market.

You only mention the inability to play Pirates... you can leave Pirates to human, and let the AI play other races.

I think it's only becouse the original factions had the whole tech-tree to comment on. You don't get to know the new factions as much.