AndreasN

As a long term strategy fan I've bought the game around Christmas and played it quite extensively over the last weeks. I've to admit the game has really grown on me, not only does it seem very polished, but the devs (a small indie team) also post a lot and keep releasing updates based on player feedback. While there are a lot of similarities to Alpha Centauri (one of my all-time favorites), it's definitely not a copy since quite a few mechanics work differently (random research tree, operations, global resource pool, etc.). What I miss the most from SMAC are the awesome secret project videos (anyone remember The Ascetic Virtues?) which brought the faction leaders to life and made it truly epic. However, considering this is an indie production I guess it's kinda expected, and at least the Pandora leaders have long background stories and dialogue. I also had some pretty cool matches in multi-player against my brother, even on large maps with several AIs the turns go surprisingly fast compared to Civ 5 (not sure what's the reason for that). The AI seems fairly competent compared to other games (it does some flanking/hidden attacks and uses operations), but nothing special. Especially later in the game you can do some really evil things with operations (e.g. drop units and bombard cities), and I remember a funny moment where I was racing against my brother for a Leviathan kill (massive alien unit that provides a combat bonus to all your units when killed) and I snatched it away with a nuke which had recharged just in time. Anyway, overall I'd say the game isn't as good as it could have been, but I definitely had a good time and can recommend it to other strategy fans. If the devs keep working on it, it can become one of my favorites.