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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, but this causes an explosive outgrowth that ends up killing most of Planet's life, just before Planet's "mind" reaches a "development threshold" that allows for survival, thus having to repeat the same cycle from scratch. And it seems like Humanity's arrival is accelerating the cycle. Will Humanity face final extinction? Can the cycle be broken? What will happen if the cycle ''is'' broken?
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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]]
▲''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]]: Alpha Centauri is a trinary system, with two large suns and a third smaller and more distant one. Planet's atmosphere is a bright yellow, claimed to offset life-threatening greenhouse gases generated by being too close to Alpha Centauri A.
* [[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.▼
▲* [[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.
* [[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]]: The aptly titled Ascent to Transcendence victory.
* [[Assimilation Plot]]: The Ascent to Transcendence.
* [[Awesome but Impractical]]: You can make a submarine that functions as an aircraft carrier.
* [[Badass]]: ''[[A Worldwide Punomenon|The.]] [[
** 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]]:
*
**
* [[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
* [[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!"
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** The University: using any value except Knowledge, or running Fundamentalist government. Justifications: "I find your pursuit of wealth/power irrational and stifling to science." and "[[Belief Makes You Stupid]]!" (the University gets more miffed about the latter than the former).
** The Hive: using any government except Police State. Justifications: "God doesn't exist, you moron; running a state according to religious principles is stupid." (''contra'' Fundamentalist) and "You really expect ''[[Viewers are Morons|the people]]'' to maintain an ordered society?" (''contra'' Democracy).
** ''Morgan Industries'': using any economic system except Free Market. Justification: "You are stifling the market with your socialist policies!"
** ''The Cybernetic Consciousness'': using any future society except Cybernetic (duh). Justification: "Anything else would be irrational."
** ''The Free Drones'': using any future society except Eudaimonic. Justification: "Your Blue Sky Research will not improve living conditions!"
** Both Progenitor factions: using any economic system except Planned (which, apparently, is closest to their own economic model).
*** In addition, Progenitor factions hate each other very much, so a peace treaty with one will be a [[Berserk Button]] for the other.
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* [[Big Brother Is Watching]]: The Self-Aware Colony's cinematic. Also, anytime you or the computer run an oppressive faction.
* [[Book Ends]]: The game's very first shot, in the intro, and very last shot, at the end of the Ascent to Transcendence, are of the same nebula.
* [[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]]: Implied to be the result of the Clinical Immortality project; definitely also part of the Ascent to Transcendence.
* [[Bug War]]: Mindworms, Xenofungus Towers and Spore launchers are hostile and incredibly dangerous, requiring military action against them whenever they appear in your faction's territory, though the second are immobile.
* [[The Captain]]:
*
** 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]]: Subverted. The ''Lord's Believers'' are for the most part derived from Protestants, though their colonies bear aesthetics reminiscent of Roman Catholicism.
* [[Church Militant]]: The ''Lord's Believers'', ''The Cult of Planet''.
* [[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
** [[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.
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* [[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]]: "You are the children of a dead planet, earthdeidre and this death we do not comprehend. We shall take you in, but may we ask this question--will we too catch the planetdeath disease?" -Voice of the Planet
* [[Emotionless Girl]]: Aki Zeta-5 of the Consciousness.
* [[Emperor Scientist]]: Zakharov may be a researcher, but ''all'' of the original seven faction leaders are scientists in their own way. Deidre and Lal are more humanistic but also heavily into the science, Yang's a brilliant social engineer, Morgan's a visionary financial genius, Santiago has a keen insight into military science, and Miriam is a social psychologist who does know a thing or two about the hard sciences, as her quote on plasma steel armor indicates. The seven faction leaders in the expansion also have shades of it. But since they are added in the expansion, you can only assume it on the 3-4 [[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri/Quotes|quotes]], each of them received.
* [[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]]: Not a very large one, consisting of three novels (''Centauri Dawn'', ''Dragon Sun'' and ''Twilight of the Mind''), a graphic novel (''Power of the Mindworms'') and [https://web.archive.org/web/20130222164349/http://www.firaxis.com/smac/story.cfm two free short stories] (''Journey to Centauri'' chronicling the story of the U.N.S. Unity in the Alpha Centauri system, and ''Centauri: Arrival'' introducing the new faction in ''Alien Crossfire'').
** 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.
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* [[Fantastic Caste System]]: Alpha Centauri has access to advanced psychological science and genetic engineering, but the availability of these benefits is uneven, resulting in a three-tiered system based on intelligence: the tiers are Talents (elite, highly-educated transhumans with full access to the benefits of their faction's technology), Citizens ([[Captain Obvious|average joes]] with limited access to psychiatric education) and Drones (inferior humans, treated as slaves and kept under control by [[Bread and Circuses]], armed police or [[Punishment Box|nerve stapling]]). The Free Drones attempt to avoid this form of social stratification, but it's still in effect nonetheless.
* [[Feelies]]: The Virtual World Secret Project.
* [[Fiction 500]]: ''Morgan Industries'', sponsor of the ''entire'' ''UNS Unity'' project and owner of a whole faction!
* [[Flavor Text]]: For each technology.
* [[Fungus Humongous]]: The Xenofungus.
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* [[Gaia's Vengeance]]: Start polluting the planet, and you'll have to fight wave after wave of Mindworms while keeping them clear from your bases. The Cult of Planet attempts to give this a more organized form.
* [[Gang Up on the Human]]: Nobody likes you in this game. The AI is programmed to gang up on you and ignore their own best interests. As in other strategy games that employ this tactic, it makes the game quite frustrating when you've invested hours, and suddenly, your 50 population empire is simultaneously attacked by three 30 population empires. Even if you perform well, you are still likely to suffer a death of a thousand cuts on higher difficulties unless you exploit the AI.
* [[Genius Loci]]:
*
** The Self-Aware Colony secret project turns your cities into these.
* [[Geo Effects]]:
*
** Since the [[Terraform|terraformer]] units in the game can change the elevation of a map tile, a viable (
** 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]]: See energy credits.
* [[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.
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* [[Guilt Based Gaming]]: If you go to quit the game, it tells you "Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you."
* [[Hannibal Lecture]]: When a computer leader thinks it has you on the ropes, or hilariously when you refuse their surrender and steamroll them.
* [[Harder Than Hard]]: The possibility of winning a game in "Transcend" is ''merely theoretical''. The theory of this game has been so well explored by now that by using some very potent techniques the AI is generally terrible at (population booms at +6 growth, supply crawler abuse, Infinite City Sprawling, etc), skilled players can steamroll Transcend on a regular basis, unless the RNG decides otherwise.
* [[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).
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* [[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 Free Drones from ''Alien Crossfire''.
* [[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]]: Averted: one of Zakharov's quotes insists "genes are ''not'' blueprints".
* [[Leitmotif]]: Every faction has theme music and cues that play as you control them, which are usually sensitive to your actions and change accordingly. The original game has five themes shared amongst the seven factions: the University, the Spartans and the Believers each have their own music, while the Peacekeepers and the Gaians share one, as do the Hive and the Morganites.
* [[Let's Play]]: A rather masterful one done up on the Something Awful Let's Play Archive
* [[Mad Scientist]]: The University is implied to be what happens when a large number of [[Mad Scientist]] types hang out together. The Academician seems like an [[Affably Evil]] version from some of his quotes. The Gaian's are similar, but the madness is because of being best friends with mindworms. The Morganites also have a Lex Luthor tendency to hire these types. Note, however, that the science involved is still very hard, it's more a case that the scientific advances come easier to a science/corporate based society with an ethics board that is either a cost/benefit analysis or a question about [[For Science!|how scientific the research is]].
* [[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", after the Greek Demigod because he was often an enemy to centaurs. When Hercules reaches perihelion, bad things happen to Chiron, usually in the form of extra swarms of mind worms and fungal blooms.
* [[Mega Corp]]: ''Morgan Industries'', a corporation the size ''of an entire faction'' (for comparison, imagine if the world had become twelve enormous countries; now imagine that one of those countries was entirely owned and operated by a single corporation... which also did work outside its own borders).
* [[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.▼
▲* [[Mind Rape]]: The way Mind Worms 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.
* [[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]].
*
* [[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]]: Averted: whenever a human faction seizes a Progenitor colony (or vice versa), the incompatibilities between the species result in the colony being downsized to 1 population and a number of colony pods for the losing faction being created.
** 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]]: The factions don't wage war, as that was what led to the doom of [[Earth-That-Was|old Earth]]. They will, however, pursue ''vendettas'' with each other.
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* [[No Name Given]]: While it does have a proper name, Chiron is usually referred to as simply "Planet".
* [[Noodle Incident]]: A quote alludes to the Americans learning painfully during Earth's final century that freeflow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The details are left to the imagination.
* [[No Place for Me There]]/[[Necessary Evil]]: ''The Cult of Planet'' will build industrial capacity in their attempt to purge Planet of the pollution of humanity; they acknowledge this and will destroy them last once everything else is cleansed.
* [[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]]: A more in-universe example than one in gameplay. Exploration/Discovery research sometimes provides you with devastating weapon upgrades (for example, learning how to synthesize fossil fuels grants you the ability to build combustion-based ''rocket launchers'').
* [[Nude Nature Dance]]: Enemies of the Gaian faction might accuse Lady Deirdre of dancing naked in the trees.
* [[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]]: Cha Dawn from ''Alien Crossfire''.
* [[Orion Drive]]: The sleeper ship is propelled by an Orion-type drive, the shield of which fails (almost certainly due to sabotage) when the ship is almost at its destination, causing the passengers on the colony ship to splinter into factions.
* [[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]]: The "punishment sphere", which make the oppressed masses too frightened to ever riot no matter what. For some reason, constructing this city improvement is not on the list of atrocities that will turn the other civilizations against you... because secretly, ''every'' faction has one stored away for the day they capture a defeated faction leader.
* [[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
* [[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]]:
*
** 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)]]}}
**
** In the game's files, technologies use seven-letter abbreviations.
▲*** 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'').
▲** Also, 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. SMAC 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!
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** 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", Wonders are "Secret Projects", Food is "Nutrients" and so on.
* [[Spiteful AI]]: The enemy loves to attack you no reason (even if it means they're going to get stomped), just to make sure you aren't allowed to play a relaxing "building" game.
* [[Standard Sci-Fi Army]]: The basic units already cover the main areas of the trope (Infantry, Oceanic Navies, Aircraft, Armored Combat Vehicles, Support). The
* [[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]]:
*
** 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]]: Mindworms.
* [[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
** 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]]: Similar to the ''[[Civilization]]'' series: "Our engineers have invented [laughably weak unit], rendering our forces invincible."
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* [[The Usual Adversaries]]: Miriam fills this role to most other factions, due to her belligerent and [[The Fundamentalist|fundamentalist]] agenda.
* [[Vicious Cycle]]: Planet's native life becomes sentient approximately every 100 million years, with the sentience coming just too late for planet to prevent massive die-backs caused by the flowering that leads up to planet becoming sentient, sending the newly-sentient Planet back into a semi-sentient dreaming state. The presence of humans on Planet's surface accelerates the cycle, leading to Planet rapidly becoming more coherent. Can humanity find a way to end the cycle? {{spoiler|Yes, they can}}.
* [[Video Game Caring Potential]]: Build an enlightened democracy. Adopt a Eudaimonic society with peace and justice for all. Take good care of your citizens, and cultivate your Talent pool. Be good to Planet, with Centauri Preserves and all the environmentalist Secret Projects. The people will reward you with Golden Ages and the increased cash flow and productivity that comes with it; Planet will reward you with an army of
* [[Video Game Cruelty Potential]]: Construct an oppressive [[Police State]]! Use Planet Busters on your enemies! Use Thought Control! Rip apart Planet and despoil her for all she's got! Sure, you might get drone riots, but you can just nerve-staple them into submission! Who cares about the sanctions, everyone hates you anyway! Besides, biological and chemical warfare are just so much ''fun!''
* [[Virtual Ghost]]: Transcendi.
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* [[What the Hell Is That Accent?]]: The Voice of Planet, as it attains sentience, speaks with a strange accent that rolls the r's.
* [[Winds of Destiny Change]]: The Probability Mechanics discovery. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded. In addition, it's hinted that Chaos Cannons and Probability Infantry manipulate probability in their odds. In the [[GURPS]] supplement, the Monoliths are said to do this, changing probability so things are better.
* [[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.▼
▲* [[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.
* [[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]]. Certain factions also play this way with regular units (the Drones, Hive and Believers are the strongest examples).
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