Pic relevant. I’ve tried playing the new Civ games several times, and quickly end up quitting because I find them too overwhelming and find it hard to want to deal with the learning curve.
It occurred to me that part of the problem might be that I was jumping into a very old franchise that has been getting increasingly complicated over the years. Had a hunch I would have better luck with the original, so I went onto one of those play-dos-in-your-browser sites, dove in, and sure enough I am hooked!
Do I know what I’m doing? Not really, but stuff is happening and my civilization is growing, and it’s a good time.
Alpha Centaui is a masterpiece and I feel it is better than any actual Civ game.
Spurred by your comment here, I did a search and Alpha Centauri is presently $2.49 on Steam. Looks like I’ll need to try that now too. 🥳
I hope you enjoy it!
SMAC (Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri) had some really interesting ideas and mechanics. SMAC is based on “well what happens after you win Civ via space race” and has actual lore, but I didn’t feel it in any way limited the replayability. There is an expansion, Alien Crossfire, that is also included in the pack on Steam. The expansion included new factions, a bunch of different game mechanic tweaks and “secret projects” (aka wonders like in Civ), but you can play them separately and I think I’d encourage you to play the original first as not all of the changes were necessarily better, just different.
It probably won’t matter since you enjoyed Civ 1 just fine, but there are some of the mods out there that can update the graphics and things like that.