This game is a fantastic purchase and far transcends anything in the Civilization series. It has a compelling story, great atmosphere, and some of the most fascinating and challenging ideas of science fiction. The greatest strength of the game for me is the unique feeling of every faction. Each of them represents a different ideology, whether it's the Spartans with unbeatable military discipline or the Believers, united and propelled by their religion. Compared to Civilization, the respective strengths and weaknesses of the factions in Alpha Centauri are overwhelmingly dramatic, ultimately dictating your play style. Similarly social engineering choices have enormous effects on your civilization. If you run a free market economy, you become immensely wealthy, very quickly, but at the cost of dramatic ecological destruction and the inability to engage opponents effectively outside your borders. Ultimately rather than merely being a recreation of human history, Alpha Centauri is a commentary on the ideals for society melded into the form of a game. If you pay attention there are many ideas and questions to ponder. If what you want is crazy sci-fi dramatic 4x strategy, it has that in great bounty. If there's any complaint I have, it is that this does not come with the expansion Alien Crossfire. The expansion adds a lot of new techs and secret projects to the game that dramatically effect how it plays out. I can only hope that it will be added to the library in time.
