After reading this thread I reinstalled SMAC and luckily it ran perfectly on my Vista system (I've had problems with other older games and many others have problems with SMAC and Vista). Man, is this a great game, far better than GalCiv (sorry, Stardock) and, after all these years, still nearly on a par with Civ4. Yes, the graphics are dated, but they are serviceable and will probably not be a major problem for any real TBS/4X fan; honestly, no one oohs and ahhs over Civ4's more modern graphics. The basic addictive gameplay is right out of Civ (it was designed at a time that Sid Meir and Firaxis lacked the IP rights to the Civ name) but is differnt enough to remain fascinating on its own. While it lacks many of the good gameplay ideas later introduced in Civ III and 4 (notably the specific resources, culture, and great people), it makes up for it with the compelling backstory for the game. SMAC's factions still have more character and athmosphere than the civs in Civ4. SMAC's voicework and "wonder movies" also are still far superior to Civ4, as much as I enjoy Lwonard Nimoy; the essential exclusion of wonder movies in Civ III and 4 was a terrible idea IMO. I also love the larger array of terraforming options than exists in the later Civ games. The only area where it really shows its age is the UI. Although very good for its time and still playable, SMAC's UI is nowhere near as user friendly or effortlessly informative as the Civ4 UI, which over the years has been polished to near perfection.
I don't have Alien Crossfire. By by time it was released, I had been hooked by EverQuest, which essentially sucked my life for five years. I's love to pick it up--but not for $100+, LOL. I'm surprised the original game and expansion are not available for digital download, since the expense would likely be minimal. I can only surmise that the profit would be minimal too--although I wish it were otherwise, how many want to play any TBS game, let alone a nearly ten-year old one? Also, Firaxis might not want to put up with the technical problems that people have with this on Vista and even XP, I understand. This was orignally released for Windows 98 IIRC.
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