Proof the preservation program is marketing bullpoo. A random dude, not even a fan of the game fixed it, submitted the solution to gog and STILL no official fix. They were GIVEN the solution on a silver platter !

The Thinker mod did get Alien Crossfire working, via its own shortcut on my desktop. Some changes to gameplay I've noticed with the Thinker mod, though:
1. New settlement names for my preferred faction (the Gaians), in addition to those which had been available in Alien Crossfire all along.
2. No intro movie -- and it seems to have removed the intro movie from regular Alpha Centauri (whether or not launched from the PRACX executalble). And I really liked the intro movies! The Secret Project movies are unaffected, though.
3. The computer-controlled factions at my usual difficulty level (Talent), and even one's own faction with AI "Governors" for each settlement at Citizen level, seem to be determined to expand EXTREMELY rapidly, at the expense of developing already-established settlements. Thus, when I play at Talent level per my usual pre-Thinker mod strategy (2 garrison units + Former per settlement, then alternate settlement buildings & Colony Pods), even if I've rush-built the Empath Guild as quickly as possible, the other factions have far outstripped me in population, so I'm not even a candidate for Planetary Governor. This issue has not cropped up in the original Alpha Centauri post-Thinker mod, but is there any way to tell Alien Crossfire's AI to stop breeding like rabbits?

My husband saw something about a "Will to Power + Thinker Mod 5.0" online this morning. Has anyone tried this, and has it improved gameplay on computers running Windows 11?

The intro movie is likely disabled by an INI setting.

Runng the Nathan Baggs patch is dead simple. I have been playing alien crossfire without issue.
github.com/nathan-baggs/Adamite/releases

I do not see why gog has just not patched the executable and refactored their build for download.

As have been mentioned on multiple threads, Thinker Mod includes a patch for the Win 11 24H2 crash issue that happened when the savegames were being written. The patch has been tested to work without issues on multiple systems and it should also have no known side effects related to the savegame format.

Reposting these links here since many probably have not seen them all. If you want to just play the game, it is recommended to download at least release version 5.0. There are some more experimental changes on develop builds, more details on that can be found from the forum thread and discord. It is also a preferred place to post any feedback. However all of the recent develop builds also include Win 11 crash patch.

* Thinked Mod website
* Forum thread
* Discord link

I think this may be the patch described in a YouTube video linked in the Steam Community Forums discussion thread on the Windows 11 24H2 issue with this game. I've just downloaded the patch (although I got a "not commonly downloaded -- are you sure you want to run this?" warning when I did). How did you install and run the patch after downloading?

I successfully downloaded the Nathan Baggs patch (after confirming "run this anyway" once or twice, since the browser didn't seem to trust it). Upon opening the patch, I got a little popup instructing me to paste terranx.exe into the box within the popup. I was then told that the patch had been successfully applied to the Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Planetary Pack within the install I had pasted terranx.exe from (the GOG install, although it seems that it should work with the Steam install of the game, too, if that's the install one is patching). This creates a terranx_nb.exe executable within the SMAC drive path, and Alien Crossfire does successfully launch from that executable (sans intro movie, although that may be because I had installed the Thinker mod earlier). I started a new game, tweaking Planet and the rules to the settings I normally use, and was happy to be able to play through the first 100 turns of a game on Talent level (the difficulty level that I normally used pre-Thinker mod), and it worked beautifully, with the computer-controlled factions behaving the way they had in plain-vanilla Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossfire -- NOT "breeding like rabbits," as they seem to do in the Thinker mod. I did have to tweak the Preferences to automatically design possible new units once the appropriate technology was discovered (something I don't remember having to do pre-Thinker mod, but perhaps that was because I had always previously played with that preference enabled). I did also create a shortcut for terranx_nb.exe and put it on my desktop (after I'd saved my game for the night). I prefer the PRACX screen resolution, and I'd really like to get the intro movie back, but the gameplay appears to be restored to plain-vanilla Alien Crossfire, the way I had always played it prior to that Windows 11 24H2 update bollixing things up. I just wish GOG would make this an official update, so that there'd be a link for it in "additional executables" on the SMAC Planetary Pack game's page in GOG Galaxy.

For any questions about features on Thinker Mod, I would just recommend looking at Details.md and thinker.ini options. All of the important items are listed there and many of them are not separately included on the game preferences menus. This also includes many difficulty related settings since the mod improves the AI as the original version was relatively poor at colonization.

Enabling the intro movies might also require adjusting some config files. When Thinker Mod is enabled, this is controlled from thinker.ini options, otherwise Alpha Centauri.ini needs to have DisableOpeningMovie set to disabled. Additionally the game preferences must have secret project movies enabled.

Using only the Nathan Baggs patch, my intro movie was fine, game launched and everything and was great but the secret project movies didn't play.

I have them enabled in settings and the ini shows DisableOpeningMovie is not enabled

If anyone can help me get them working that would be amazing.