Most games I toss around on forums as being the greatest game of all time, I cannot bear with the low tech graphics or performance when attempting to replay.
Not the case with Alpha Centauri, which I replayed not too long ago. I'm both impressed and depressed how a 17 year old game is still standing the test of time.
I like Alpha Centauri no questions asked. I even bought it on GOG.com, when it was avalible. Just so I had a copy avalible for download.
However, I do see some flaws in it too. Flaws that were not used in later civilsiations games:
The Unit designer. My usual opinion is that Unit designers are just complexity without much depth. And that the AI can not realy use them anyway, so it looks even worse. This applies to at least the following games: SM's Alpha Centaui, Earth 21xx Series and Stellaris.
Psionic Combat. Both the mind worms and the later techs. While the idea was not bad, it caused to much chaos on the battlefield.
The Politics/Government System. While I loved how you could mix and match the 4 Areas with your Faction advantages, the complexity also meant a whole lot less Factions could be made. And again the AI was terrible at it and you propably just went for the "perfect build" anyway.
The Blind reserach. Especially with the overly complex and intertwined tech tree. I think Stellaris randomized, 3 tech at once and 3 card deck research is the much better brother to it.
Also the graphics part I think is a leak over from the fps genre, you cant get any more in depth than point you gun and shoot while moving around so graphics had to be the way they innovated. In something like a rts/tbs/4x there is theoretically no end to the depth you could put into one when trying to simulate the complexities of a nation states. But I think some of that was lost in trying to keep up with the graphics. Total war and Civilization being some notable 'casualties'.
Depth has to be measured against Complexity on a game design point of view. And there is only so much complexity where a game is still fun to play.
You need to know where the core engagement of your game is and focus most of your effort there. Having Civilisation units simulated to the last soldier would serve no gameplay purpose. It would be as useless as adding Ship Veterancy to Stellaris.
Interesting it appears the Civilsiation series is prone to Accretion. Extra Credits did an episode on it:
I did think of BE when reading the dev diary. That's okay though. However I feel like there should more, like knowledge, survival, religion etc. And they should be restricted based on active governing ethics. Starting with moderate ethics (like just 1 regular one) will have more traditions open to you.
SOMETHING has to be done with traditions, feels too much like social policies rip.
Government Ethics thus far were the most restricted things in the game. The rarest resource.
You got to choose 3. At the game start. You could never change them. That was it.
With the new Faction System and the abiltiy to change Government Ethos, that partially disolved. It is no longer the rarest resource. With the reduction of Pop Ethos to "one normal per pop", the system is also Simplified. While Traditions are acreted on top of it.
Traditions become the rarest resource instead. Increasing cost per step will incentivise focussing on one. And based on what I saw thus far, the Selection of a Ethos will be as or even more gamestyle defning as Ethos is now.
We also already saw clear focus on playstyles that were thus far based on Ethos. Collecitivist/Xenophobe is no longer defining for Slavery Empires. In part because Collectivist is now Authoritarian. In part because Unity now puts slavery onto the Domination Tradition.
Regarding the ones you want:
Knowledge is already there. It is called Discovery Tradition. And of course there is still the Materialist Ethos itself.
Survival is the implicit goal of every Government in Stellaris.
Religion is already covered by Spiritualist.
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