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But [[Finagle's Law]] says everything that can go wrong will go wrong, and this mission was not the exception. The deep freeze system malfunctioned and the colonists found themselves living on rations meant for colonization in spaces around the ship not meant for living quarters. An explosion on board causes massive damage to the ship's thrusters, creating an escalating crisis among the ship's leaders. As a result, the ''Unity'''s captain is murdered, and the crew is now split into 7 different factions, each one commandeering a colony pod and launching for the surface of Chiron (known in the game as "Planet", and yes, ''that's a proper noun''). Each faction has a different ideology and their own plans to achieve prosperity in the new world. These factions include:
* the militaristic ''[[The Spartan Way|Spartan Federation]]
* the theocratic ''[[Church Militant|Lord's Believers]]
* the technocratic ''[[Mad Scientist|University of Planet]]
* the capitalistic ''[[One Nation Under Copyright|Morgan Industries]]
* the environmentalist ''[[Green Thumb|Gaia's Stepdaughters]]
* the collectivist ''[[Dirty Communists|Human Hive]]
*
The expansion pack added:
* the rationalistic ''[[Cyborg|Cybernetic Consciousness]]
* the socialistic ''[[Commie Land|Free Drones]]
* the anarchist ''[[Playful Hacker|Data Angels]]
* the religiously-enviromentalist ''[[Gaia's Vengeance|Cult of Planet]]
* the [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|self-explanatory]] ''[[Recycled in Space|Nautilus]] [[Space Pirates|Pirates]]
* two alien factions,
A little tweaking would also reveal a secret faction:
* the self-inserted [[Lethal Joke Character|Firaxians]], which may or may not be two factions since either Sid Meier or Brian Reynolds can lead.
Upon their arrival, however, everybody finds, to their horror, that Planet is not nearly the safe haven they had hoped for. The atmosphere is far too light on oxygen and heavy on nitrogen, forcing anybody exiting sealed colonies to wear oxygen masks, and that's the least of their concerns. The local "flora", known as Xenofungus, covers much of the surface and prevents settlement or even easy transport where it occurs. Worse yet, the Xenofungus acts as a home to "
But the real twist begins when Deirdre Skye discovers that Planet's native life might be friendlier if treated nicely, and starts considering the idea that the entire Xenofungal network might well be a ''gigantic'' brain. And it seems like every 100 million years or so, Planet's native life achieves a state of growth large enough to turn the entire Planet into a gigantic sentient being, with a consciousness and a mind of its own
Created by the masterminds Bryan Reynolds and [[Sid Meier]] under the auspices of Firaxis, and released in 1999, ''Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri'' (abbreviated as ''SMAC'', the expansion is ''SMAX'') is a turn-based strategy game that, while rather popular, didn't managed to reach the soaring popularity of the ''[[Civilization]]'' series. However, that doesn't mean the game is worse. Far from that. [[wikipedia:Sid Meierchr(27)s Alpha Centauri|According to the Wikipedia entry about the game]], even though development was rather hindered by Reynolds and Meier's departure from Microprose to found Firaxis, ''Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri'' was awarded by the US edition of PC Gamer a score of 98% (the first and one of only three games to have ever done so), and was also granted a long list of Game of the Year prizes. A trilogy of novels based on the game was even written! Admittedly, this doesn't sound too impressive by modern standards, but in 1998, it was basically unheard of.
As the [[Spiritual Successor]] of the ''[[Civilization]]'' series, ''Alpha Centauri'' features incredibly complex and profound gameplay, with a myriad of options and variables that can leave an unskilled player dazed with too much information, although a Civilization player can pick up the game and get started right away. Like the ''Civilization'' games, in ''Alpha Centauri'' you start with a single city, and your job is to create more Colony Pods to expand your colony with new cities, carefully nurture the ones you already have so they can reach a high population and become productive and profitable, research new technologies to unlock new units and options, and if you want to (though it's not necessary), wage war on everyone else. As is common in the series, there are [[4X|four ways to win the game]]: Conquest (just [[Kill'Em All]]), Economic (gather enough [[Pure Energy|Energy]] -- the game's [[Global Currency]] -- to buy everyone else's bases), Political (get elected as Supreme Leader by the Planetary Council)
However, the biggest merit of the game to many came from the way it portrays [[The Future]]. The vast majority of it (basically, everything that doesn't involve mental powers, and [[All There in the Manual|sometimes even those]]) is justified by [[Mohs Scale of Sci Fi Hardness|Hard Science]], most of the scientific concepts are linked to our nowadays science from <s>2009</s> friggin' 1998, and the few ones that aren't have already been explored and predicted by theoretical scientists and writers. Combined with the near total absence of nonsensical [[Techno Babble]] and the clever use of quotes from game characters and real literary works, this setting actually manages to suck you inside and take seriously the struggle for Humanity's own future, [[Cue the Sun|only to let you go once you look outside your window and see the first gleam of the morning sun shining through
The game is relatively old, and hard to find in most retail stores nowadays, although British re-packaging firm [https://web.archive.org/web/20190305092159/http://www.sold-out.co.uk/ Mastertronic] ([[The Trope Formerly Known as X|Formerly known as "Sold-out software"]]) is selling{{when}} new copies of the original game with expansion pack for some $11/£4.88, likely in honour of the game's 10th anniversary), but it's worth searching out for any fan of hard, complex strategy and simulation games. It is now{{when}} available on [https://web.archive.org/web/20121114103626/http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/sid_meiers_alpha_centauri GOG.com] for $5.99. Alternatively, you can buy ''[[Civilization]] IV'' and download [
''If you came here looking for the actual star Alpha Centauri, and not the Sid Meier video game, [[Local Stars|look here]]
{{tropelist}}
* [[4X]]: The game was ''marketed'' with the tagline "Explore. Discover. Build. Conquer." Additionally, the [[Tech Tree]] has identifiable (if intertwined) tracks (Explore=environmental/expansion/scout techs, Discover=pure science, Build=base-building and industrial/development-type techs, Conquer=military techs), and you can set the AI "Governor" at your bases to focus on a single track, or a combination of them, if you don't care to micromanage.
* [[Aerial Canyon Chase]]: In the cinematic for The Cloudbase Academy Secret Project.
* [[After the End]]: Sometime between the ''Unity'
* [[Alien Sky]]
* [[All There in the Manual]]: The on-disc manual has an appendix that goes into quite a bit of detail about the nature of Planet and its denizens. Also, three novelizations and one short story "prequel" that is available online. The ''[[GURPS]]'' tabletop roleplaying game setting book has tons and tons of story information and details that they left out of the main on-disc manual and novels and short stories.
* [[Archive Binge]]: In-Universe, to win the Transcendence victory, you have to upload ''every single bit of data regarding humanity'' into Planet's mind. At once.
{{quote|Imagine the entire contents of the planetary datalinks, the sum total of human knowledge, blasted into the Planetmind's fragile neural network with the full power of every reactor on the planet. Thousands of years of civilization compressed into a single searing burst of revelation. That is our last-ditch attempt to win humanity a reprieve from extinction at the hands of an awakening alien god.|'''Academician Prokhor Zakharov''', ''"Planet Speaks"''}}
** The result is a quite momentary bit of [[Archive Panic]] on Planet's part.
* [[Armor Is Useless]]: It is to the
* [[Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence]]
* [[Assimilation Plot]]
* [[Awesome but Impractical]]
* [[Badass]]:
** Units start tough and mindworms just feed them experience points. By the mid-game, the majority of their units will have "hardened" rank or better. Also the only faction that can [[Zerg Rush]] without being crippled by slowed development, as well as start fights with multiple factions in the early game and ''survive''. If the Believers attack them early in the game, the AI controlling the Spartans goes berserk and will often take a large chunk of their territory, wiping them out early. It's rare, but satisfying to watch.
* [[Bad Moon Rising]]:
** Every time Hercules/Alpha Centauri B reaches perihelion, that means 20 years (turns) of increased wildlife attacks.
** Solar flares mean communications are disrupted so diplomacy is disabled. But atrocities are kept secret.
* [[Base on Wheels]]: Colony Pods are big rolling life support systems for a thousand workers that unfold into colony cities when they get to their destination.
* [[Belief Makes You Stupid]]: The fundie tendencies of The Lord's Believers prevent them from accumulating research points during the first ten turn-years. Compound that with their natural 20% penalty to research speed, and you get a faction that ''needs'' to run Fundamentalist social engineering to catch up using slightly cheaper Probe Teams... and woe betide the Believing player in a game where the most advanced faction has the Hunter-Seeker Algorithm!
* [[Berserk Button]]: All of the factions have a [[Berserk Button]] which increases their hostility and can provoke them to declaring Vendetta... namely, picking a government, economic model, value or future society that isn't their own agenda (or the no-modifiers starting model):
** The Peacekeepers and the Data Angels: using any government except Democracy. Justifications: "You're violating human rights"/"It's an insult to freedom!"
** The Gaians and the Planet Cult: using any economic system except Green. Justifications: "Your insensitivity to the environment is troubling."/"Your insensitivity to the environment is sacrilege!" (the Cult gets more irritated/militant about it than the Gaians, who are less bloody-minded).
** The Spartans and the Pirates: using any value except Power. Justification: "You're idiots, and wealth /knowledge are very suspicious to us."
** The Believers: Using any government except Fundamentalist, or running Knowledge values. Justifications: "You're disobeying the will of God!" and "[[Science Is Bad|Science is evil!]]"
** The University:
** The Hive:
** ''Morgan Industries'':
** ''The Cybernetic Consciousness'':
** ''The Free Drones'':
** Both Progenitor factions:
*** In addition, Progenitor factions hate each other very much, so a peace treaty with one will be a [[Berserk Button]] for the other.
** It should be noted that some factions regard this as more serious than others, and this is closely linked to which option you take and how aggressive they are. Morgan won't much mind if you pick Green as long as you don't annoy him too much otherwise--Planned is another story, assuming he has the resources to fight you--while the Believers will declare on you for switching to Democracy or Police State, even if you're not running Knowledge (with which she has a bigger beef).
*** Even then, leaders might overlook any of these for pragmatic reasons like global politics, [[Enemy Mine|a faction you both hate more than you hate each other]], good trade relations, one faction's insignificance to the other (either by being far away or by being very small and weak), technology-sharing, and so on. Thus you can have a game where, for instance, the Peacekeepers and the Hive have a long-lasting Treaty of Friendship and never fight even though they share a border, or where the Morganites and Gaians have a Pact. The only real exception (besides the hardcoded fight between the Progenitor factions) is Miriam, who will always fight Zakharov. Always.
** Firing a Planet Buster will cause every faction to declare Vendetta on you, regardless of your relationships between them. Plus, you will be expelled from the Planetary Council, and there is no way to negotiate peace once the other factions declare war.
* [[Big Brother Is Watching]]
* [[Book Ends]]
* [[Brain In a Jar]]:
** One of the results of the Clinical Immortality project.
** The Bioenhancement Center facility implies the use of these in the quote heard upon building one. See the trope page for details.
* [[Brain Uploading]]
* [[Bug War]]
* [[The Captain]]:
** The never-seen Captain Garland, who, true to the trope, was the only man who could have held his highly diverse crew together. He was mysteriously assassinated shortly before Planetfall, resulting in his subordinates splitting the crew into the seven factions.
** Ulric Svensgaard of the Nautilus Pirates is addressed by the title of captain.
** There's also the leader of the Spartan Federation, Colonel Corazon Santiago.
* [[Christianity Is Catholic]]
* [[Church Militant]]
* [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]]:
** [[Not Playing Fair with Resources]]: On transcend difficulty, the AI can mind control your units and bases or hurry production for less than a quarter of what the same would cost you, and several difficulty-related penalties do not affect the AI, such as eco-damage and base number-caused inefficiency. In every difficulty setting, it's a case of [[The All-Seeing AI]]: even your submarine tech probe cruisers can get blown up, out of nowehere, in the middle of the ocean, by a missile.
** Late in the game, as global warming from increased populations and industrial activity provokes Planet, it is supposed to start sending massive waves of mindworms to attack the faction most responsible. Instead of two or three mindworms randomly appearing, massive armies numbering 30-40 in some instances will start suddenly popping up outside of your major bases... and as soon as you defeat the last of this batch (or nearly so), ''another'' batch just as large will suddenly sprout into being (the Planet just generates them... unlike your faction enemies, it has no infrastructure limitations). Dropping some Planet Buster nukes causes massive ecological damage so this is ''guaranteed'' to make Planet start sending waves of native life after you. The kicker? In single-player, Planet will ''always'' single out the human player... even if you ''were not'' the one who detonated nukes, or if you only have a meager infrastructure relative to the super-power factions who are doing the overwhelming majority of the pollution. Planet won't single out the faction that fired nukes like it's supposed to, ''nor'' will it at least attack every faction equally. Basically, as soon as planet-wide eco-damage becomes bad enough, ''regardless'' of who caused it, it will single out you the human player as a target. It also gets fairly determined to wipe you off the map: if you're in the late game and have sufficiently advanced tech and military, such as Tachyon Shields around each base and units armed with maxed out tech tree capabilities (Stasis Generator armor, Singularity Engines, Graviton Guns, etc), you can actually weather an assault by 30 mindworms for one turn. So it just sends ''more'' of these super-swarms of over 30 mindworms. Within the space of ten turns, you can sometimes fight off over 300 of these things, ''and they just keep coming''. Even if you weren't even responsible for the eco-damage. Dropping a Planet Buster on one of these super-swarms doesn't really help either: 1, they usually pop up right next to your own base, so you're nuking your own soil, dropping the soil down to sea level; 2, dropping nukes is one of the things that specifically pisses off Planet ''even more'' (though given that it's already mad at you personally for no good reason...); and 3, for all the damage the Planet Buster does to the landscape, the computer shall just auto-generate ''another'' super-swarm of over 30 mindworms on the next turn. While all of this is going on, ''none'' of the other, even more powerful factions are getting targeted.
** [[My Rules Are Not Your Rules]]: Wild spore launchers can fire from isles of the deep. Under no circumstances may player artillery of any sort fire from any sort of transport.
* [[Crapsack World]]: Earth had turned into this in the backstory and no matter how well you do, Planet will go this way as well {{spoiler|as she starts to ramp up the mind worm population to deal with the human infestation}}. Also, most of the factions can be pretty shitty places to live in depending on your social position.
* [[Crystal Spires and Togas]]: Some environmental projects, such as The Telepathic Matrix, are run by what looks like mages in shiny, luminous temples.
** [[Used Future]]: Other structures, however, look dirty, dilapidated, and run by thousands of underpaid workers. The movie for The Self-Aware Colony comes to mind.
* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: Zakharov ''is'' the planet's most brilliant geek, so it makes sense that he'll occasionally make an offhand snarky comment.
* [[Death World]]: Deirdre makes it very clear that "juicy ripe grenade fruits may look appealing, but a mouthful of highly toxic organonitrates will certainly change your mind in a hurry."
** Organonitrates also tend to be ''[[Made of Explodium|explosive]]'', so the "grenade fruit" might well be aptly named.
** The Xenofungus and
** While Planet is very hostile to Earth animals, the carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere and nitrogenous soil make Planet a paradise for Earth plant life.
* [[Disk One Nuke]]:
** "The Weather Paradigm" secret project increases the rate of all terraforming actions, save for removing xenofungus, by 50%, and also lets you raise and lower terrain, and build boreholes and condensers, without needing the mid-game technologies normally needed to enable them.
** For Zakharov, "The Virtual World". The Virtual World makes every Network Node in the player's faction double as a Hologram Theater, quelling drones and providing Psyche... it so happens that one of the perks of the University is that every base gets a free Network Node upon construction. Zakharov's problems with extra drones just got solved for the next century or so.
*** If rushed for, the Hunter Seeker Algorithm can be gained in the early-mid game by the University faction. What does that project do? Oh, only remove their biggest weakness, probe teams. Permanently.
** If you're fortunate enough to begin near a landmark, which give some sort of resource bonus to bases in their radius, it's a big help. Special mention to the Ruins and the ''Unity'' wreckage. The Ruins are a cluster of 8 Monoliths, which each give 2 of each resource, while the wreckage gives you a Unity Chopper, Mining Laser and 150 energy credits.
* [[Dysfunction Junction]]: The expanded universe prologe suggest that the ''Unity'' planners took no account of the personalities of the ship's leaders before launching.
* [[Earth-That-Was]]
* [[Emotionless Girl]]
* [[Emperor Scientist]]
* [[Encyclopedia Exposita]]: The Datalinks entries for every tech advance, base facility, unit ability and Secret Project in the game. These, of course, run parallel to later ''[[Civilization]]'' games' Civilopedias. [[Shown Their Work|It's thorough]].
* [[Energy Economy]]: The [[Global Currency]] is energy credits, with energy gathered from solar collectors, tidal generators and thermal boreholes. Nwabudike said it best when he said:
{{quote|"In former times the energy monopoly was called 'The Power Company'; we intend to give this name an entirely new meaning."}}
* [[Everything Is Trying to Kill You]]: The
* [[Expanded Universe]]
** It is worth noting that the novelizations are loosely based on the three scenarios included with the game. Then again, it is not that difficult to imagine that factions with opposing ideologies are going to have problems getting together (e.g. hippies and warmongers, tree-huggers and ultra-capitalists, religious fanatics and crazy scientists).
** In addition, GURPS released a sourcebook for ''Alpha Centauri''. In addition to stats, it provides alot of background detail on the factions that isn't in the game.
* [[Exposition of Immortality]]: One of the text interludes that crop up during gameplay at various intervals mentions you and your Planetfall colleagues still being alive after several centuries. It makes mention of you spending time in a rejuvenation tank in order to maintain your longevity and that at least one of your staff still looks to be in the prime of her youth, even after two hundred years.
* [[Face Full of Alien Wingwong]]
* [[Fantastic Caste System]]
* [[Feelies]]
* [[Fiction 500]]:
* [[Flavor Text]]:
* [[Fungus Humongous]]: The Xenofungus.
* [[Gaia's Lament]]: Earth in the [[All There in the Manual|backstory]].
* [[Gaia's Vengeance]]
* [[Gang Up on the Human]]
* [[Genius Loci]]:
** What you--and all of humanity--become after reaching the Transcendence victory.
** The Self-Aware Colony secret project turns your cities into these.
* [[Geo Effects]]:
** High ground means better output from solar collectors, rocky terrain increases mine output, fungus is a general-purpose pain in the ass unless you're Gaians/Planet Cult or have a ton of Explore technologies/secret projects, and so on.
** Since the [[Terraform|terraformer]] units in the game can change the elevation of a map tile, a viable (if ridiculous) strategy in the game is to create a mountain chain between yourself and an enemy to the east. Mountains actually trap moisture, like they do in real life; since for purposes of that the game assumes that the wind blows ever eastwards, it's possible to use the "raise terrain" command as a way of giving yourself better farmland while making deserts out of a rival's farms.
** A faster way, albeit a more expensive one, would be to launch a missile with a seismic warhead and detonate it over the needed terrain. This will create an instant mountain. Since this warhead does not wipe out cities, it is not considered an atrocity by the other factions. [[wikipedia:Operation Plowshare|Edward Teller would be proud]].
* [[Glass Cannon]]: Any unit with a high attack rating and a low defense rating becomes this, but there's also an in-universe version of it with the
* [[Global Currency]]
* [[A God Am I]]: In the epilogue, after you complete your Ascent to Transcendence, the pronouns referring to you are capitalized, just as they usually are in reference to [[God|the Christian God]] in religious literature.
* [[Gray and Grey Morality]]
* [[Great Offscreen War]]
* [[Guilt Based Gaming]]
* [[Hannibal Lecture]]
* [[Harder Than Hard]]
* [[Hive Mind]]: The biomass of Planet acts as a single semi-sentient planet-sized brain.
* [[Human Popsicle]]: How colonists are stored in Colony Pods (read: new cities in the making).
* [[Human Resources]]
* [[Human Subspecies]]
** Homo Superior:
** Genejacks:
* [[Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels]]
* [[Ill Girl]]: Aki Zeta-5 in the [[Backstory]] suffered from rheumatic fever three weeks before planetfall.
* [[Immortality Seeker]]
** [[Obvious Beta|That's what you get when you're an early adopter
** "I plan to live forever, of course, but barring that I'd settle for a couple thousand years. Even five hundred would be pretty nice."
* [[Instant AI, Just Add Water]]
* [[Jack of All Stats]]: The Peacekeepers. Their advantages and disadvantages are all relatively slight, so they're a good all-'round introductory faction (although the Gaians can also serve this role).
* [[The Joy of X]]: The title of your memoirs after you retire (used as a ranking of how well you did) is based off of an existing work.
* [[Just One More Level]]: Lampshades this, and even encourages it at one point.
* [[Kill It with Fire]]: The standard approach to
* [[La Résistance]]:
* [[The Laws and Customs of War]]: The U.N. Charter prohibits extermination of human populations, the use of nerve gas, nerve stapling people (in a non-systematic way; it's perfectly okay to run a [[Punishment Box|Punishment Sphere]]
* [[Lego Genetics]]
* [[Leitmotif]]
* [[Let's Play]]
* [[Mad Scientist]]
* [[Meaningful Name]]: Prokhor Zakharov. His first name is so close to 'Proctor' that the two will become inevitably mixed up. A proctor watches over students taking a test, much like Zakharov watches over his people as they take the test of Planet.
** Alpha Centauri B is named "Hercules",
* [[Mega Corp]]:
* [[Mind Rape]]: The way mindworms paralyze their victims.
* [[Moral Event Horizon]]: [[In-Universe]] example when using a Planetbuster, which completely annihilates the target, but causes ''everyone'' to turn against you, even if you repealed the U.N. Charter against atrocities (it only covers minor atrocities, such as using chemical weapons and nerve stapling) or use them against aliens. Including Planet. People will get nervous if you so much as ''build'' one, and when another faction lets you know they have, you know they're about to try to extort you for something. Nerve Stapling will result in a ''very'' negative reaction as well.
* [[Named After Somebody Famous]]: Zakharov may be named after Andrei Sakharov, a Russian nuclear scientist, who [[Arthur C. Clarke]] fictively attributed the ''Leonov'''s reaction drive to in ''2061: Odyssey Three'' (similar to the reaction drive used in the ''UN Unity'', developed by Zakharov). In the Real World, Sakharov is known for having won the Nobel Peace Prize for his activism against nuclear proliferation and the [[Arms Race]]... and the development of the 50MT "[[From Russia With Nukes|Tsar Bomba]]" a.k.a. the biggest bomb ever set off ([[My God, What Have I Done?|the latter led to]] [[The Atoner|the former]]). It is worth noting that [[Shown Their Work|Zakharov is also a real Russian surname, unrelated to Sakharov, stressed on the second syllable (zaKHArov) unlike the original (SAkharov)]].
** Zakharov was originally named "Saratov". The dev team changed his name before the game's release when it was pointed out that it was an improbable Russian surname (there is a city and administrative region called Saratov though).
** CEO Nwabudike Morgan and his faction are likely a reference to the 20th century financier J.P. Morgan. And looks just like [[Morgan Freeman]].
* [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast]]: Custom units have preset names, including one name each for high-powered offense and defense. For example, a gravship outfitted with a singularity laser (weapon power = 24, [[Mr. Show|the highest number]] in vanilla ''Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri) will be called a ''Singularity Deathsphere''. Ooh yeah. On the other hand, this can lead to cases of [[Deathbringer the Adorable]]: put Silksteel Armor on an Impact Rover, and you get an Impact Dragon. This might be scary in the early game, but would quickly get dated.
* [[Naming Your Colony World]]: An example under virtually every category.
* [[New Tech Is Not Cheap]]: This has prototyping, where the first unit of a new design has an added initial cost before you can even produce any. This cost is ignored by the Spartans and at bases with a Skunkworks.
* [[No Biochemical Barriers]]
** Even before the expansion pack added the Progenitors, it takes getting through a good part of the tech tree and thorough analysis of the native life to get useful amounts of resources out of Planet's native xenofungus. One of Lady Deirdre's [[Encyclopedia Exposita|in-game quotes]] (also given above) contrasts the appetizing look and decidedly unappetizing nature of a particular native fruit.
** Even though Planet is remarkably Earth-like, its atmosphere has a lower proportion of oxygen (which, once again, is often mentioned by Lady Deirdre, who talks about plant life thriving in the anoxic environments on Planet). As a result, humans have to wear pressure helmets at the very least, lest they succumb to nitrogen narcosis. This is why all infantry units wear bodysuits in-game.
* [[No Delays for the Wicked]]: Yangs special ability is immunity to inefficiency, meaning he can run a planned economy and a police state without any penalty.
* [[No Except Yes]]:
* [[Non-Indicative Name]]: When a Secret Project is started, nearly finished or completely finished, the fact is broadcast to the entire world.
* [[No Name Given]]: While it does have a proper name, Chiron is usually referred to as simply "Planet".
* [[Noodle Incident]]
* [[No Place for Me There]]
* [[Not So Stoic]]: Most of Zakharov's quotes have him speaking very calmly, an academic giving a lecture. However, in the quote for the Temple of Planet, he's absolutely furious:
{{quote|Let the Gaians preach their silly religion, but one way or the other I shall see this compound burned, seared, and sterilized until every hiding place is found and until every last Mind Worm egg, every last slimy one, has been cooked to a smoking husk. That species shall be exterminated, I tell you! Exterminated!|'''Academician Prokhor Zakharov''', ''"Lab Three Aftermath"''}}
* [[Not the Intended Use]]
* [[Nude Nature Dance]]
* [[One Nation Under Copyright]]: ''Morgan Industries''.
* [[Opening Narration]]: There's a little blurb at the start explaining the situation.
* [[Oppressive States of America]]: One of Pravin Lal's quotes references a painful lesson about the importance of free flow of information learned by Americans in Earth's final century.
* [[Oracular Urchin]]
* [[Orion Drive]]:
* [[Pink Girl, Blue Boy]]: The [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|Progenitors]] are split into two factions, [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|the Manifold]] [[Gaia's Vengeance|Caretakers]] and [[A God Am I|the Manifold]] [[Social Darwinism|Usurpers]]. The Caretaker leader is a feminine alien named Guardian Lular H'minee who is a reddish pink, while the Usurper leader is a masculine alien named Conqueror Judaa Marr who is a blueish green.
* [[Pro-Human Transhuman]]: Transcendi.
* [[The Promised Land]]: The people of Earth and Unity considered Planet to be this, due to Earth's massive [[Crapsack World]] status. The Believers consider Planet to be their Promised Land in a more Biblical sense as well.
* [[Psychic Powers]]: Mindworms rely on telepathic fear to paralyze their victims. Humans can develop psi abilities too, from the telepathic empathi and mindworm handlers to units of psychic warriors who are as deadly as mindworms.
* [[Punishment Box]]:
* [[Recycled in Space]]: ''[[Civilization|Civilization II]]'' {{smallcaps|IN SPACE!}}. Most of the game mechanics are either exactly the same or very similar.
** Later, a mod for ''Civilization IV'' (Final Frontier), included with "Beyond the Sword" contains many homages to it.
** Of course, some of the ''[[Civilization]]'' games have a victory condition where you launch a colony ship to Alpha Centauri, so it could also be considered a sequel, especially since the game begins 10 years after the latest date Civ can end.
* [[Robot Republic]]: Or rather, Cyborg Republic, in the form of ''The Cybernetic Consciousness''.
* [[Sanity Slippage]]: If you decide not to show mercy to an enemy who offers total surrender, it's quite fun to watch their rantings get more and more insane as they continue contacting you while you slowly exterminate their faction.
* [[Screw the Rules, I Have Money]]: Nwabudike Morgan.
* [[Shout-Out]]:
** Microsoft (in the late '90s) and Morgan Industries. Just compare Microsoft's slogan "''Where do you want'' to go ''today?''" with Morgan's slogan "''Where do you want'' your node ''today?''". Similarly, the "Network Backbone" Secret Project (think "Wonders" from ''Civilization'') includes a quote from Morgan where he insists he doesn't want a monopoly despite bundling his company's software with every Network Node... their products are "just so good" that no one feels a need to compete.
** The video for the Secret Project "The Longevity Vaccine" takes the form of a series of network bumpers for Morgan TV (the video opens with what sounds like the [[NBC]] chimes played on an electric guitar), surreal, '90s-style rapid-fire ads for other Morgan products (it's Morgan Industries, so of course they're going to treat the cure for death as just another product to be marketed), and the Alpha Centauri equivalent of ''[[South Park]]''.
{{quote|'''"Morgan"''': [[Crowning Moment of Funny|Hey! Get off my land, you peacekeeping sonofa--]][[Curse Cut Short|(channel change)]]}}
** The tech name "The Will to Power" is directly derived from the works of [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], and while "Homo Superior" might seem to be a simple reference to Linnean taxonomy, you realize that it's also a good way to express the term ''[[Ubermensch]]'', which comes from... Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche quotes appear for both technologies (all from the Prologue to ''Thus Spoke Zarathustra'').
** The names of some bases (like ''Farnham's Freehold'' or ''Googleplex'') may ring some bells.
** In the game's files, technologies use seven-letter abbreviations. ''Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri'' shortens the Digital Sentience technology to [[2001: A Space Odyssey|HAL9000]]. SMACX has String Resonance, which enables the best weapon in the game, shortened to [[Doom|BFG9000]].
** The portrait of the Peacekeepers' leader Pravin Lal might ring a bell too: he's basically the Indian (that is, Southern Asian) version of real-life UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
* [[Shown Their Work]]: And how!
* [[Slap-On-The-Wrist Nuke]]: ''Reversed''. Using a (quasi-nuclear) Planet Buster will leave a huge crater where the enemy city or twelve ''used'' to be.
* [[Sliding Scale of Turn Realism]]: Round by Round.
* [[Sound Off]]:
{{quote|I don't know but I've been told
Deirdre's got a Network Node
Likes to press the on/off switch
Dig that crazy Gaian witch|Spartan barracks march (''Yes sir!'')}}
* [[Spiritual Successor]]:
** In some ways, this reaches [[Serial Numbers Filed Off]] territory. While the gameplay is identical, the terminology is changed; people pursue "Vendetta" instead of "War
* [[Spiteful AI]]
* [[Standard Sci-Fi Army]]: The basic units already cover the main areas of the trope (Infantry, Oceanic Navies, Aircraft, Armored Combat Vehicles, Support). The mindworms and the Isle of the Deep could be consider examples of Exotic and (to a certain extent)Indigs.
* [[Starfish Aliens]]: Progenitors: in depth: their wacky sentence structure. The sentence structure is shown to be just how humans interpret or translate their speech, or maybe their attempts at communicating with humans. The "interludes" shown to a Progenitor player don't contain any of the weird sentence structure.
** One of the weirdest things about them is how they communicate. Generating patterns of sounds is how humans talk; progenitors "alter" existing sounds with their resonance. In written form, their alphabet might look like instructions for "*existing sound* Pitch Up, Pitch Down, Pitch Way Up, Elongate", etc.
* [[Strawman Political]]: Wonderfully averted. Even [[Church Militant|Miriam Godwinson]] and [[The Evils of Free Will|Sheng-ji Yang]] make legitimate points: the former's [[Science Is Bad|fear of technology]] is [[Cybernetics Eat Your Soul|quite]] [[Sinister Surveillance|frequently]] [[Powered by a Forsaken Child|justified]], while the latter's goals bear an uncanny resemblance to the process of [[Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence|transcendence]], and many of his quotes are rooted in Eastern mysticism and suggest he genuinely believes [[Utopia Justifies the Means]].
* [[Superweapon Surprise]]:
** Gaians. Living in peace and harmony and environmental balance is great, especially when your ecological prowess helps make friends with, and power up, indigenous creatures that [[Psychic Powers|psychically paralyze enemies]] and proceed to core out their skull like an apple. While they're still alive. Which no amount of advanced armor or high-tech weaponry can defend against. Good times. One of Deirdre's books (Our Secret War) talks about how they would attack and obliterate their Spartan opponents with mindworms, ''with nobody realizing the Gaians were controlling the mindworm boils''.
** The 'Planet Cult', a faction introduced in the Alien Crossfire expansion, are even more naturally aligned to Planet than the Gaians, but they already had rather a fanatical bent.
* [[Telepathic Spacemen]]
* [[Too Awesome to Use]]: While Battle Ogres in ''Alien Crossfire'' have impeccable stats early-game (especially the Mark IIs and IIIs), they can't be built or repaired (even by Progenitors or monoliths), and their encounter rate among scattered Unity Pods is too low to scavenge a decent force. They do, however, come with "Non-Lethal Methods" (double Police duty during Drone Riots) and have resonance defenses (to better defend against psionic (i.e. mindworm) attacks), and thus are better garrisoned at a base rather than dismantled outright.
** Planet Busters also have elements of this, thanks to the fact that everyone will immediately and irrevocably declare war on you if you use one. Alternatively, if you ''can'' stockpile enough Planet Busters, you could declare war on everyone and win, although you'll run out of continents pretty quickly; initially because you've blown great big holes in all the other continents, this is quickly followed by sea level rise caused by your enormous levels of eco-damage.
* [[Too Dumb to Live]]
* [[To Serve Man]]
* [[Tube Travel]]
* [[United Nations Is a Super Power]]: The remnants of the UN form the UN Peacekeepers faction, which can become a powerful (or weak) faction depending on how the game turns out.
* [[Upgrade Artifact]]
* [[The Usual Adversaries]]
* [[Vicious Cycle]]
* [[Video Game Caring Potential]]
* [[Video Game Cruelty Potential]]
* [[Virtual Ghost]]: Transcendi.
* [[What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?]]
* [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?]]
* [[What the Hell Is That Accent?]]
* [[Winds of Destiny Change]]
* [[Won't Work On Me]]: The Hunter-Seeker Algorithm project renders all of your cities and units immune to any sort of probe team sabotage and kills the team that attempts it. This makes it a must-have for the University and anybody else with a low Probe stat. Although it doesn't stop other factions from framing you for probing the rest who didn't get it.
* [[You Shall Not Pass]]: Somewhat parodied by Richard "Recon Rover Rick" Baxton, who is lauded as a hero for holding off four waves of mindworms. At the same time, his [[Family-Unfriendly Death|death]] is glossed over to be able to sell his story.
{{quote|'''Morgan:''' Richard Baxton piloted his Recon Rover into a fungal vortex and held off four waves of
* [[Zerg Rush]]: Mindworms attack in massive waves, unconcerned about the defenses they face. [[We Have Reserves|Planet has reserves
----
{{quote|''Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you.''}}
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