Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Did You Know?

• Alien Crossfire introduces five new human and two non-human factions.
• A spiritual sequel, Civilization: Beyond Earth, was released in 2014.

Synopsis

The narrative begins in the 22nd century, after the 2060 launch of the United Nations colonization mission Unity to Alpha Centauri's planet Chiron. Unbeknownst to humans, advanced extraterrestrials called Progenitors had conducted experiments in distributed nervous systems, culminating in a planetary biosphere-sized presentient nervous system called the Manifold on Chiron, leaving behind monoliths and artifacts. A reactor malfunction on the Unity wakes the crew early and severs communications with Earth; after the captain is assassinated, the most powerful leaders build ideological factions with conflicting agendas.

As the ship breaks up, seven escape pods scatter factions across Planet. In the Alien Crossfire expansion, players learn that Progenitor experiments at Tau Ceti created a hundred-million-year evolutionary cycle that eradicated most complex animal life in several star systems. After this disaster, the Progenitors split into Manifold Caretakers, opposed to further experimentation, and Manifold Usurpers, favoring a controlled Flowering on Planet.

Development

After the release of Civilization II in 1996, disagreements between new management at MicroProse and employees prompted Brian Reynolds, Jeff Briggs, and Sid Meier to leave and found Firaxis. Unable to use the same intellectual property as Civilization II, the new company chose science fiction as a fresh topic, believing players wanted a new sweeping epic of a turn-based game. With no previous experience in science fiction games, they chose a plausible near future situation of a human mission to colonize Alpha Centauri.

Reynolds researched science fiction for the game's writing, drawing inspiration from classic works including Frank Herbert's The Jesus Incident and Hellstrom's Hive, A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge, The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars, Slant by Greg Bear, Stephen R. Donaldson's The Real Story, Dune by Herbert, and Bear's Anvil of Stars.

Reception

Alpha Centauri received wide critical acclaim upon release, with reviewers respecting the pedigree of Reynolds and Meier. Aggregator websites GameRankings and Metacritic listed scores of 92% and 89%, respectively. The game was favorably compared to Civilization II, and the expansion was praised for a believable plot.

Despite critical reception, it sold the fewest copies of all games in the Civilization series, with over 100,000 copies in its first two months and 50,000 in the following three months. In the United States, it was the tenth-best-selling computer game of 1999's first half, with sales of 224,939 copies by the end of 1999 and 281,115 units by September 2000. The game showed well at the 1998 Electronic Entertainment Expo, winning Most Promising Strategy Game and Best Turn Based Strategy from a vote of 27 journalists.