Actually Playing Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri for Once

Yeah. I literally never played the game to completion that my current incarnation of my nation is based on for at least one year. I played as Morgan (the capitalist guy) and started on my own dinky little island and built my economy up and up and up while Yang (the communist/Eastern mystic/totalitarian/I don't even know what else guy) beat up Santiago (the militant faction), Lal (my avatar), and Deidre (crazy enviromentalist) for lunch money. At the end only Lal, Diedre, Miriam and I remained standing. Lal was stuck on his little ocean base while Diedre managed to flee onto an empty island, and Miriam got her own continent all for herself. I eventually won through Transcendence, the "canonical" victory, and I managed to research every technology in the game. At the end one of my minor cities produced the science of the entirety of the other factions.

I really do love this game

Actually went through another playthrough. A second Transcendence victory, surprisingly enough, with Colonel Santiago of all things. It was a mostly peaceful playthrough as I mostly kept to my own island, but sometime in the midgame Diedre decided to be especially obnoxious and began to harass me with Needlejets from across the strait, destroying some of my noncombat units in the area. Eventually though I picked up the tech that allowed for support-free units and just spammed elite helicopters ad nauseum from my capital, all of them interceptors, so I became more than adequately protected. As in the other game, I probably could have tried to take over the world more directly by the midgame, but that took too much time and effort. I also could have gone for an economic victory by just getting scads of energy, but that would have been no fun.

Still baffled that I managed to play Santiago as a peacenik and succeed. At least she wasn't Miriam.

I like the earth people the best. But I also do not understand this interface. This interface I do not understand. I do not understand at all.

It gets better with practice

On another note, have you checked out Eador: Genesis like I suggested once on Skype?