Yes to all of those questions.

SMAC is my favorite of the Civilization series for two reasons: The first is that it's just a very well-made game- it has lots of features and internal mechanics which took Civilization over a decade to catch up to (and still doesn't do as well). The second is that it starts at slightly-future tech, and proceeds to singularity. I find that way more satisfying than starting at agriculture and proceeding to slightly-future tech, partly because I like sci-fi more than I like history, and partly because it lets you consider more interesting questions. For example, the seven factions in the game aren't split on racial lines, but on ideological lines: there are seven competing views for how society should be organized and what the future should look like, and each of them has benefits and penalties that are the reasonable consequences of their focuses. SMAC is deeply flawed for three reasons: The AI is over a decade old, and so it's difficult to be challenged once you know how the game works. (This was also before they had figured out a good way to hamstring ICS, and so ICS is the dominant yet unfun strategy.) The multiplayer code is over a decade old, and so not only are the AI difficult to play against in a fun manner, other people are difficult to play against for frustrating technical reasons. The factions are tremendously unbalanced. While this is a neat statement about social organization- no, fundamentalism is a worse idea than an open society, unless you want to rule over a world of ash- it makes it a somewhat worse game, because single or multiplayer games are tainted by the tier rankings. Similarly, in single-player games you are always playing with the same seven factions, unlike in Civ games where you're able to play with a varied host (and as many or as few opponents as you want). It is worthwhile to see the whole tech tree a few times; it is worthwhile to learn how the game works; it is possible to nod contentedly and walk away from SMAC, saying "I a