I so want to love this game. Let me list the good aspects first. 1.) Great atmosphere. 2.) Engaging storyline. 3.) Interest setting featuring a sentient planet, your citizens evolving into brains in jars or transcendent beings, etc. Now the bad parts. 1.) TERRIBLY UNBALANCED FACTIONS. The Hive or Spartans wins almost every AI map. Just look up "Vel's SMAX Guide" for confirmation. Some factions (Morganites) are terribly weak. Starting off on the same landmass as either means near instant death. This KILLS the single player game. 2.) AI cheats and is a bully. All AI players will say "Give me money or tech, or die". Because of this the entire game breaks down into a wargame. At even middle difficulty (Talent) one AI player will start to expand exponentially. I've no way of knowing how they can grow so fast apart from cheating. At higher difficulty levels, the enemy does in fact cheat. 3.) Broken victory conditions. Transcendence is about the only way to win, because domination is insanely time consuming. You can't drag select a bunch of units and tell them "go to this base", but instead select units individually. This makes domination a lesson in mouse clicking. You can try to be planetary ruler. I tried this, and even won the election, but then the other factions either refused (and I had to conquer them to win) and the other faction wasn't interested in helping me win, so winning diplomatically is just another form of domination (even down to the ending text... not even a movie like in Transcendence). Don't get me started on the broken economic victory... I feel like this had such great potential, but wasn't play tested. There's a reason few play this in single player and upload to youtube; it is punishingly difficult if playing as anything but Spartan, Hive, or Academics, and it gets monotonous.
