What are the best unofficial patches and mods?
Something like widescreen support, and some balance and bug fixes?

Also, I will ask a question in advance - do these mods/patches work for the original game and crossfire? Do I need to install separate versions?
Because I have heard that the original game is better than crossfire.

Both are great ;)

The main difference are the factions:
- original game factions are very close to what we have right now on Earth, it helps the game to deliver strong political messages
- expansion factions are more extreme science-fiction stuff, they tend to be more fun to play but this is at the expense of the political commentary

Yes on the political side, but on the power side, the most draconian races are the powerful ones. For example, in SMAC North Korea would overrun America. The races are way out of balance like that.

But it is still a great game

I would say Crossfire is better for the simple fact that the Alien races are a more effective opponent.

In the Original game you basically lost 2 races right off the bat because they are so weak they are not viable races at all - The Morganites and the science one. So you got to make up for these losses, hence the 2 Alien races.

I tend to see the faction choice as some sort of difficulty level, from easy mode with the Gaians to hard mode with Morgan™ Industries ;)

As I almost never play multiplayer, the power imbalance does not feel like an issue.

Yea i have done that.

The problem is though, it just takes too long to research the ability to capture mind worms. So i usually play Gaian.

I would probably set all the races to Gaian if i knew how? The rest of the races have got serious shortcomings.... some are overpowered at the start of the game, - Believers, but they all flop over and pretty much go dormant by mid game, except Gaians.

When you use the custom factions selection (instead of the preset 7 vanilla or 7 Alien Crossfire factions) you can assign several copies of a single faction to multiple players.

See the attached picture for a glorious full Gaian setup ;)

Sorry, i meant setting all races to Gaian, ,,, , not setting all factions to Gaian... so, you would still have all the different factions but running on Gaian settings - this is what i could not figure out how to do?

I guess what you want is to tweak the settings of the other factions to get the same advantages/disadvantages than the Gaians? But to keep the distinct names and city appearances?

This you can do by editing the faction settings, they are all set in plain text files in the game directory:
- believe.txt
- gaians.txt
- hive.txt
- morgan.txt
- peace.txt
- spartans.txt
- univ.txt

Hello,
I think this is probably the best mod for AI for this game. I use it to make sure the AI gives me a better game.

https://www.gog.com/forum/sid_meier_s_alpha_centauri_/smacx_ai_growth_mod_version_125

https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=20959.0

SMACX AI Growth mod
Copyright 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 by Brandon Van Every
Contact: bvanevery@gmail.com
Version 1.48, January 29, 2021
see CHANGELOG at end of this file

I began this mod in mid-April of 2018. Its design, and all the playtesting needed to improve it, took 1 PERSON YEAR of full time work to produce. It was 2.5 years of psychological engagement. In some other universe where I made money, this could have been a year's salary. The project is stable, mature, and now in maintenance mode. I still play my mod, and sometimes I think of a way to make it better. Previously I was on a monthly release schedule, but now 4 months have passed. I expect the intervals between releases to grow longer and longer.