Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Secret Project: The Self-Aware Colony

Playlist of all SMAC and SMAX cutscenes: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=...

From the videogame known as Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, this is the secret project video for The Self-Aware Colony.

Secret project details:
Cost: 500
Prerequisite Technology: Self-Aware Machines
Effect: Energy maintenance cost for facilities is halved at all of your bases. If use of police is allowed under the current social model, all of your bases are considered to have an extra police unit.

"Will we next create false gods to rule over us? How proud we have become, and how blind."
-- Sister Miriam Godwinson, "We Must Dissent"

Ripped with HCl's Wing Commander Movie Player: http://hcl.wcrevival.de/movie_player....

• Category

  Gaming

[teencomment]

Haven't played the game, so what exactly does this thing do? Just has a security system to run the colony?

[matsku84]

Yeah it's like a learning AI controlling the security and maintenance duties of your colony. It helps law enforcement lessening the amount unhappy citizens and also halves energy maintenance costs of all facilities in all of your bases.

[teencomment]

Alright. And what does "We must dissent" mean?

[matsku84]

It means "we must oppose". The people are probably trying to form a resistance against the self-aware AI which has become so radical in it's actions that it killed the citizen who made that graffiti.

[Wafflepudding]

I for one welcome our new Self Aware Colony overlords, at least when they're eliminating your freedoms they don't draw a salary doing it. And I've been told there will be cake.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

She makes a fair point with We Must Dissent. By the time of the Self-Aware Colony, technology on Alpha Centauri has seriously started to go off the deep end and venture into things that redefine the most basic boundaries of humanity. Miriam is generally thought of as a closed-mined Luddite, but objecting to things like making colonies that can think for themselves is reasonable, as the video demonstrates. She mentions "false gods to rule over us", which sounds a lot like religion in general.

[mlarosa25]

i would point out with government values, you can play aggressively(or however you wish) with most of the factions if not all of them. big fan of morganite industro millitary rush, likewise corporate hive and corner energy market.

[Daryl Sawyer]

EvilMagnitude is correct, and there's nothing quite like a momentum game using the Believers. If you use your probes right, your army is an unstoppable juggernaut.

That said, you're probably right about the devs and fundamentalism. During this period they had a "fundamentalist" form of government in both Civ2 and SMAC. By Civ3, Fundamentalism had been cut from the list, and religion was introduced as a game mechanic in Civ4.

[Daryl Sawyer]

The ideological balance in this game is truly astounding. Every faction can be defined as a "good guy" faction or a "bad guy" faction.

[Christoph Burschka]

Second creepiest project animation in the game.

(First place goes, naturally, to the Dream Twister.)

[EinSammelsurium]

I don't see her as a Luddite - I see her as very cautious and canny about the potential effects of technological advancement on society, sometimes unnecessarily but she sees that as worthwhile. She and Pravin are the only two voices on Planet to ask "Guys? Hey, guys? Could we maybe not go through with this until we've thought about whether it's a good idea, and maybe come up with some failsafes for human nature?"

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Truly, a moral quandary that shall persist through the ages. In any case, it is irrelevant. While the Luddites of Ned Ludd were not necessarily anti-technology, that is what the term has come to represent in standard discourse. Ludd's Luddites no longer being around leaves this redefinition without legitimate disputation.

[almanacofsleep]

I would counter that it wouldn't make much difference to someone who could no longer feed his family, he might not think that the end justifies the means.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I would make the argument that not realizing the potential societal good from industrialization makes the Luddites close-minded.

[almanacofsleep]

Err the Luddites weren't opposed to technology or industrialisation because they were closed minded but because it threatened their livelihoods.

[Princess2Warrior]

Can you blame them? xD