[minikites]

Civ 2 and Alpha Centauri are still the best balance of simplicity vs fussiness in my opinion. I like Civ 5 quite a lot but there's a lot of fussing about with the resources like horses or oil and there are a lot of edge-case city improvements.

[endgame]

Given the amount of fussing required to get the most of Supply Crawlers in SMAC, I'm surprised to hear that viewpoint.

Nevertheless, the scope of SMAC's vision continues to inspire: https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/ is analysing the canon and implications from the various quotes and project videos.

[minikites]

You're right that the fussiness is there with supply crawlers and some of the terraforming options, but they can be ignored.

Civ 2 is pretty much perfect. Each terraform has 1 or 2 upgrades (road/railroad, irrigation/farmland, etc) and each city improvement serves an exact purpose with no "filler" improvements.

[animal531]

They take some manual intervention, but even at high difficulty level you don't really need to use them.

What made SMAC great was how many different viable strategies there were (not that they were as well balanced as those in later Civ iterations). It was great fun to mess with other factions just by modifying the terrain and sea level.