Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri™ Planetary Pack

This is simply the best civ-like game ever made. The most accurate key word to describe its strength is freedom. Individualize your units, individualize the landscape, individualize your way of governing... you name it. You can even spend a fair amount of time here by individualizing any base, as its worked tiles can affect each others output depending on what improvement you build or how you terraform them. So to 4X-junkies it's a feast. But what might make it even more outstanding is the atmosphere it builds around the actual gameplay. The factions deriving from the failed UN-Mission are traceable, their traits differ them reasonable. But besides the player writing his own story of ideological competition and its eventual outcomes, there's the living planet interfering, affecting and enriching this story. The wonder videos still transport a unique and classy atmosphere, as does the believable tech tree with its excellently written and dubbed datalink quotations. Some may disagree, but I think the even then (1998) cheesy graphics still add to the atmosphere, just because of transporting the feeling of actually playing on an exoplanet. Look at Beyond Earth or Pandora and you'll know what I mean. The ingame sound - not sure if one can label it music - is not spectacular, but nonetheless adds to the futuristic atmosphere. Well, I just should add the word "atmosphere" to the initial mentioned "freedom" to describe this gem best. :-)

This one is masterpiece. After all years, AC is still The Definitive Civilization Experience. Get it. Just get it.

Even though it doesn't hold up graphically on modern systems, Alpha Centauri is still an incredible game. It's like Civilization, on an Alien Planet with hostile alien life forms, where you control one of many very unique factions, with custom units.

I loved SMAC when it came out originally and it remains the one game in the Civ family that I've played the most. Since I've lost my CDs I had to get in on GOG when it finally showed up. Although it technically isn't a Civilization game, it was headed by Sid Meier himself when he disagreed with MicroProse on what direction the Civilization games should go after Civ II. SMAC represents a unique take on the 4X genre with a great story, customizable units, and an overall feel of everything working perfectly the way it should. Unlike the failed and boring approach that is Beyond Earth, SMAC has interesting factions, a fairly belivable tech tree and environment, a planet that reacts to your actions. and it all combines to make an engaging game that truly stands out as being done right. Although it's not really intended that way, AC basically answers the question of what happens after you win the space victory in Civilization. SMAC remains a must-have and must-play for all 4X fans. Even if it doesn't have the many diplomacy and trade layers that were added with Civ 4 and 5, it still has many features (and a lot of charm) that are sorely missed from the "real" Civ games or any of the many clones that have sprouted. It also shows just how well a game can be made when it's done for love of the game, and not for love of money.

4x at its best. Not much to say beyond that. This is the 4x game all 4x games aspire to be. Nothing has come close to it, since. That's what makes it spiritual successor, Beyond Earth, so disappointing. Sid had the best reference material in his own creation and seemed to ignore it.