#GAMES LIKE PLANET CENTAURI SERIES#

Moreover, the division of factions into ideological groups makes sense in a game about colonization, since social constructs such as nations will not matter in the harsh demands of surviving in an alien world however, human beliefs will.

An entire class of social engineering options is devoted to how your faction will deal with the alien planet's flora and fauna, which in turn affects the society that you build over the course of the game. The special terrain features that are randomly placed will affect the way that you expand, given that these features offer significant bonuses to bases built next to them.ДЈ) Human society operates differently in an alien planet, and Alpha Centauri's social engineering mechanic (the precursor to the customizable social policies of Civilization games from IV onwards) reflects this aspect of colonization. In Alpha Centauri, the prominence of alien flaura and fauna will influence which technology paths you will take-having lots of fungus in your territory will most likely lead you to research techs that improve yields from that fungus. A faction like The University may have the best guns and armor, but if their soldiers are green rookies, they will still be killed by a few mindworms.Дў) The decisions and actions you make in game are affected by the planet's rules, just as colonizing a planet like Mars will have to seriously consider how life there is different from Earth's. This is because mindworms have psionic abilities, and only soldiers with the mental fortitude gained through experience can resist the mindworms' psionic attacks. Instead, they look at the morale of the unit i.e. The mindworms (think Civilization's barbarians) do not care about attack and defense values of human units.

The alien organism in Planet also feels appropriately alien, because they operate on different mechanics in terms of combat. You can literally affect this unique characteristic of the alien planet by terraforming your territory to raise the land such that your bases are located west of that elevation. Winds on the planet always move from east to west, which makes rainfall more beneficial in areas west of elevated terrain. Alpha Centauri succeeds as the best planetary colonization game because of three mechanics-driven elements:ДЎ) The alien planet you are colonizing feels aptly alien because of unique mechanics tied to how you build and expand. Anyone who hasn't played the game will probably see how it looks like and think 'Hey, it's Civilization in space'. The only game that really captures colonizing an alien planet superbly is Alpha Centauri.

Building that base doesn't change depending on the planet, and characterized by the same repetitive, bland mechanics that plague No Man's Sky. No Man's Sky has no colonization to speak of, with every base that you can 'construct' already being there. This simplification is understandable, since these games focus on building star-spanning empires and not colonizing planets specifically.

Stellaris, Galactic Civilizations, Endless Space and other space 4X are good games, but colonizing planets in them are simple affairs: clicking on a colony ship towards a destination, then click a few more buttons to terraform that planet if you want. I do not understand why people are saying Stellaris and No Man's Sky are good examples of games that do the colonizing of other planets well.

#GAMES LIKE PLANET CENTAURI SERIES#

There are a few space flight/combat/trading sims with some colony building aspects too, where I think the Evochron games (especially Evochron Legacy) probably have the most fleshed out mechanics, but No Man's Sky has gotten more and more of it with recent updates too, and the X series (with X: Rebirth beging the most recent) have some space station and fleet building aspects. Master of Orion, Endless Space, Sins of A Solar Empire, Galactic Civilizations, Distant Worlds, Star Ruler and Stellaris stick pretty close to the traditional formula in which colonization primarily is your means to increase production or research rates in order to defeat other civilizations.ДЄnno 2205, Aven Colony and Startopia deal with more city/colony management stuff in the vein of Sim City or The Settlers with little or no combat. Basically the entire traditional 4X genre is about that (the term originally only meant Master of Orion style space colonization games, not the likes of Empire or Sid Meier's Civilization which have retroactively become part of it).

Games like planet centauri