Or just wait for Civ: Beyond Earth. It looks bloody gorgeous at this stage.
It is... different.
Even more than how Civ 3 is different from Civ 5, at the very least.
Tbh i'm not sold yet on Beyond Earth. Compared to a giant like SMAC, they will have a hard time to even match it, but I think that's not their goal to begin with. They just went for something different and much more accessible.
But there is a lot of things I either don't really like or just can't think anything about in Beyond Earth. It's too... gimmicky/casual. One of the flaws of Firaxis in all their recent titles imo.
SMAC is so old they do not even have to think about it. It is not a giant, it is a fossil.
Edit: In addition, despite its critical success SMAC was sold the least out of all of the Civilization games. So in the sense of a legacy, also not a problem. If they named the new game after it, then perhaps a comparison would be in order. But as it is, they do not have to be worried.
It's a giant fossil
SMAC actually had a great reception but rather poor sales overall, which is a shame, but understandable as it targets a niche audience and is a lot more complex than civ.
And that's precisely why they didn't use the same name. They want something different. Less daring I would say...
Yeah, the nostalgia goggles, dey do nahthing. It was an amazing game for its time, but tried it recently and it's frankly not all that good anymore. The UI is so dated and fiddly it's not even funny. I'll take this spiritual successor any day of the week, from what I've seen.
I think that SMAC UI is great, although a bit old looking indeed. The level of customization of that game is just mindboggling. Either of the interface itself (you will rarely see something such customizable these days), or just the game modes themselves (<3 that slow tech mechanism, it's ten times better than their marathon thingy these days).
But it suffers from obscure things, like a good and clear explanation of combat and numbers shown, the tech tree, while great, suffers from a very poor representation... That's the main gripe I may have with SMAC : some things are too obscure or not clear enough, or difficult to access to have a clear picture of things.
I'll take SMAC over Beyond Earth for now. I like some of their ideas in BE, but some others, I just don't.
That's also why I tend to prefer civ 3 over civ 4 or 5, even if it lacks some of their new concepts like religion, hexa shaped grid, etc. They suppressed so many things that were essential to what I consider to be the core of a civ game that it makes me cringe a bit even if I now play civ 5...