YMMV / Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Out of the expansion characters, the most popular are Foreman Domai and Prime Function Aki Zeta-Five.
  • If the YouTube comments on each of the "faction defeated" videos is any indication, Prokhor Zakharov seems to be this. For all the other leaders, one commentor or another will make a crack at the victim's expense, but for some reason, Zakharov doesn't get this treatment.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The University and Cybernetic Consciousness can be this in the hands of a good player. Much as with Civilization, knowledge is power, and tech advances, especially in the early game, are a big deal. Properly played, the University and/or the Consciousness can procure important tech advances first thanks to their research bonuses, and over time will outpace most other factions in terms of research. They can then leverage their tech advantages into amassing an Elite Army of combat units far superior to their enemy, expand into a massive network of upgraded bases for population and map control, or just extort their allies into doing favors for them in exchange for a tech advance. Their penalties are easily offset with the proper social engineering choices and secret projects.
    • The University starts with Information Networks and also gets a free tech advance of their choice at the start of the game, giving them a lot of flexibility in their tech path. And if they pick Social Psyche or Biogenetics, they can rush to Secrets of the Human Brain before any other faction to get a free tech advance, giving them four advances in the time it will take other factions to get two. They also get a free Network Node at every base, not only boosting their research further, but any alien artifacts the player finds can be hooked up to a Network Node for more free tech advances.
    • The Consciousness starts with Information Networks and Applied Physics, giving them stronger-than-normal troops off the bat if the player wants to go for early aggression. They have not only the same research bonus as the University, but they also have +2 Efficiency, giving them a more robust economy and fewer drones, which both mean they can go for a large network of bases and suffer less drawbacks from inefficiency and increased bureaucracy. And with fewer penalties than the University, they won't need to be as strict with their social engineering or have to rush secret projects to offset those penalties.
  • The Manifold Caretakers and the Manifold Usurpers are Purposefully Overpowered in single-player, starting with a ridiculous number of tech, a powerful offensive unit, a boost to combat, a full world map, and extra resources at each base. The drawbacks is that if both the Caretakers and the Usurpers are in a game together, they are in a perpetual state of Vendetta, and they cannot engage in diplomacy with human factions beyond a Treaty of Friendship, nor can they pursue a diplomatic victory. If AI-controlled in single-player, they also have the drawback of starting several years into the game. It is clear they were balanced around this idea that they needed the head start to be on equal footing with the other factions, but if the player plays as one of them, they begin the same time as everyone else yet retain their advantages. The two factions are outright banned in multiplayer because their benefits hugely outweigh the drawbacks.
  • The Nautilus Pirates start in the sea and have access to foils from the start of the game. This means that they have complete independence from the rest of the players in the early game and uncontested access to sea pods. If the map is primarily water, the advantages of the Pirates can snowball and they can establish uncontested rule of the seas long before the other factions even build their first foil. This lets them control which factions can meet each other, where they can go to establish new bases, and if they want to be aggressive, they can bypass most infrastructure and storm coastal bases by surprise.
  • The Free Drones have one less drone at each base, and have a powerful +2 Industry to make them very productive, at the penalty of -2 Research. But the industrial bonus can easily be leveraged to offset the research penalty with social engineering and base facilities that boost research. In the meantime, the increased industry means they will build units and base facilities cheaper and faster than other factions, an advantage so universal it can be directed however the player chooses. They can also use Probe teams to both leverage one of their other advantages (causing drone riots to potentially cause enemy cities to declare themselves part of the Free Drones) and to steal enemy technology in the early game so they don't have to worry about their penalties until they can build their way past them.
  • Cloudbase Academy, a Secret Project that gives a free Aerospace Complex^note A building that gives higher quality to all flying units supported by (built in) that particular base. in each base of the faction that owns the project's home base. For economic benefit, this also means that a player's entire empire suddenly has full benefit to any satellites that have been launched. In multiplayer, of course, the usual response to someone else developing it is to nuke the base from orbit.
  • The population boom mechanic can be this. Raise your "growth" stat high enough and any city with two food will *immediately* increase its population by one every turn until it runs out of food. Population size affects the building resources and income of a city, being able to shoot its population up allows you to take a tiny city and make it a powerhouse in just a few turns, if you have sufficient food.
  • Cloning Vats secret project provides the never-ending population boom, along with (more importantly) removing penalties from Power and Thought Control social policies. Normally those two provide a stacking penalty to Industry and Support ratings, meaning the army is elite, but also very small and expensive. With Cloning Vats... If built by anyone in multiplayer, it's the top priority of every other player to nuke base with it ASAP.
  • While easily missed the early game, Supply Crawlers are a quick way to rocket a base's production into the stratosphere.
  • Starting in Monsoon Jungle and getting nutrient bonus within the reach of your base. Expect population to explode. If this happens on a river tile it goes from simply game-breaking to so ungodly powerful the game is already decided.
• High-Tier Scrappy: Many are unhappy with the new factions in the expansion, believing them much more powerful than their counterparts in the original game. The aliens get hit particularly hard with this, since their primary disadvantage (their inability to properly form alliances and launch diplomatic programs) isn't a factor in multiplayer games.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A planet only a bit bigger than Earth has been discovered in the Alpha Centauri system... that's as close to its sun as Mercury is to ours. Dammit. Though, it orbits Alpha Centauri B. Chiron (fictionally) orbits Alpha Centauri A. There's still hope!
  • The Cybernetic base "Tau Collective" sounds like a Shout-Out to the collectivist Tau Empire from Warhammer 40,000, but Alien Crossfire came out in 2000, while the first Tau Codex didn't come out until the next year.
  • In Alien Crossfire, Foreman Domai is an Awesome Aussie who was turned into a drone in his Backstory. A recurring character on Futurama would also have an Australian Accent and be regularly enslaved.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you."^note Drones are working class citizens who will revolt if they become too numerous. The line is sometimes said by the narrator when quitting the game.
  • AND THEN THEY WERE EATEN BY MINDWORMS!^note A nod to the Space/Science victories in the Civilization games, which involve sending a starship to Alpha Centauri. Needless to say, the colonists would be in for a surprise.
• Narm: The "faction eradicated" cutscene is normally horrifying, but becomes unintentionally hilarious when the faction in question is the Cult of Planet. There are only three versions of the captured leader's scream (one for female human leaders, one for male humans, and one for aliens), and the male version is much too deep for the childish Cha Dawn.
• Player Punch:
  • When you first create a Mind Worm boil, you'll be treated to an interlude where your faction leader dispatches a trusted aide (with a randomized name, different per faction) to become the boil's controller. If that first boil gets destroyed in combat, another interlude will appear where your faction leader is looking upon the scorched remains of said aide, and is quite distraught by the sight.
  • If you subsequently capture the city that produced the unit that killed your aide, you get a third interlude, and the city is renamed in their honor automatically.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • It may be a Science Fiction game about space colonization set in the 22nd century and beyond, but between Science Marches On and all the factions in the base game being based on some flavor of Clinton-era American politics, it's very much the future by way of The '90s. Even in the expansion, Alien Crossfire, where the factions were more esoteric, the Data Angels have a distinctly '90s Post-Cyberpunk feel to them, with their radically democratic/anarchist hacker society and fervent belief that Information Wants to Be Free.
  • The "Abort, Retry, Fail" reference in the Matter Editation technology was already starting to fall out of common knowledge in computing circles as Microsoft Windows began to push away the usage of MS DOS, which is where most people would know the common error message from. The reference strongly dates the game, or at least the people behind it, to the 1990s.
• Values Resonance: Entire game's theme of political factionalism and environmental concerns became more in tune with the current Climate Change crisis and polarization, especially in the United States, in The New '10s.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Cha Dawn, a child leader with an ambiguous appearance and a female voice actor, tends to invoke this. A player may not even realize he's male until other leaders refer to him with male pronouns or his faction is eradicated (see Narm).
• The Woobie: Pravin Lal, whose sole goal is to preserve the original Unity mandate of creating a peaceful settlement for humankind on another planet and must now watch as that dream falls apart through factional infighting — and it's up to eleven in the Novelization. He can become a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, however, depending on how the game unfolds. Of course, it is also possible (with sufficient luck and skill) for him to more-or-less peacefully re-unite the factions with his ideals as the forefront — he does get double votes in elections for Supreme Leader, after all.

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