Technically speaking, Alpha Centauri is an entirely new game with an entirely new story.... but who are we kidding? The story picks up, quite simply, where the Civ games left off. After humanity achieved spacefaring capability,  a starship is launched to explore and begin the colonization of the universe. Or at least, this particular little corner of the universe. Sound familiar? In essence, this is the ending of the Civ games, which is -in essence, again- the same as the opening of Alpha Centauri.

Humanity, after working its tortuous way into the 22nd century, sends a starship, optimistically named the Unity, to colonize a planet called Chiron, orbiting Alpha Centauri. (Not moving all that far from home, eh what? Well, points for realism, anyway. No way is the first real interstellar colony craft waltzing off into the great unknown without first giving the neighbours a try.) Now, the concept of fail-safe technology is a thing of the distant past. True to form, there is a reactor malfunction and all the colonists are prematurely awakened from the hibernation of cryosleep, still light years away from their new home. To judge from most science fiction plots, this kind of thing happens all the time to would-be colonists. What do the newly awakened colonists do? Well, they’re human...what else can they do? They start arguing. 

By the time they arrive at their destination, they have split into seven distinct factions along various ideological lines. In alphabetical order, the factions are the Believers, the Gaians, the Hive, Morgan Industries, the Peacekeepers, the Spartans and the University. It’s quite easy to guess exactly what the ideological splits are, isn’t it? The Gaians are tree-hugging, waste-recycling, environmentally-conscious types while the Believers are fanatical, intensely loyal religious zealots. The Spartans, like their original namesakes, are predominantly militaristic, as are the Hive, while Morganites are interested mostly in industrial growth, profit and economic clout. The Peacekeepers are the party-poopers and the University faction is into research and hi-tech. The distinctions, thankfully, do have an effect on gameplay- but more on that later. 

Now, do any of these ideologically-divided factions have the common sense to repair the malfunction in the ship’s reactor, which was the reason they were woken up in the first place? In a word, no. 
 

(more points for a realistic -some would say pessimistic- view of human nature) End result? Ship goes kerploooey just before they reach Chiron. Does everybody die? Of course not. There wouldn’t be any game then. No, they all jump into their separate escape pods and land on Chiron at random, a scattering of proto-colonies each with their own peculiar agenda and their own peculiar ideas of what the future of this planet should be. A thorough mess, and no mistake. The bureaucrats back on old Earth must be tearing their hair out.

This, of course, (that is to say, when everything is in a thorough mess) is where you come in.