GameSpot's Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Game Guide

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part 1

Chapter 1: Exploration
Chapter 2: Infrastructure
Chapter 3: Research and Development
    Paths to Dominance
    Explore
    Discover
    Build
    Conquer
    Secret Projects
Chapter 4: Military Fundamentals

Chapter 3: R & D

Secret Projects
Secret projects can make or break your civilization. Without them, you lack the enhancements and bonuses they bring; with them, you can become a powerful force to be reckoned with. While all areas of research and development are open to every faction, secret projects are first come, first served. That means whoever researches a secret project first is the sole owner of the secret project for the remainder of the game. With this in mind, it should be clear that when a secret project is available for research, you should tackle it as soon as you feasibly can.

Secret Projects offer incredible benefits. The Human Genome Project, for instance, adds 1 talent per city.

TIP
The only way to get a secret project earned by an opposing faction is to conquer the city in which it was built.

Secret projects come into being by researching the four main categories of development: Explore, Build, Discover, and Conquer. Only one of your cities can engage in research for a specific secret project. Considering that secret projects take an extremely long time to complete, your largest mineral producing city should be the one engaged in this activity. Secret Projects can literally cost 10 times as much as your most expensive regular base enhancement, and take that much longer to build.

You can't expect to have every secret project available. With up to six other competing factions, everyone will be in a race to to each secret project. What you must do is be selective and pick the secret projects that will most benefit your empire, depending on the needs you have. Once you do decide to set your city to building a secret project, consider tweaking your work force to maximize your mineral producing potential. Take as many workers off of nutrient and energy production tiles as you can without going negative in those two resources and divert them to tiles that produce minerals.

WARNING
You should only research a secret project when the city capable of producing it is in fine shape economically and has a positive growth rate. If your city is frequently having problems feeding itself or suffers from drone riots, now would not be the time to divert your resources to a secret project.

Let's take a look at some of the early secret projects you'll have access to and how they fit into the big picture. For advanced details on all the available secret projects, head to Chapter 14.

The Citizens' Defense Force
The Citizens' Defense Force is a powerful secret project that builds a perimeter defense at every city in your empire. Any new city you create after the discovery of the Citizens' Defense Force will gain this enhancement automatically. A perimeter defense will double the defense strength of any base, making it extremely difficult for the opposition to break through and take over your city. Considering the effect applies to every city, its power and importance should be readily apparent.

WARNING
Chairman Yang of the Hive automatically starts the game with a perimeter defense at every city, so Yang should not waste the time or effort in researching the Citizens' Defense Force.

Next: The Command Nexus, and more