When I play Alpha Centauri, I like to modify the initial values for Social Engineering. I give Frontier a Morale Boost, Simple Economics an Effic Boost, and I give Survival a Support Boost. In traditional versions of Alpha Centauri, this works just fine.

The GOG version doesn't read the boosts for some reason. I know it reads the text file because when I inputed them incorrectly, the game locked up on start.

Did I just incorrectly alter the alphax.txt or alpha.txt or is it something new with the GOG version?

I successfully modified GOG's Alphax.txt to give Frontier ++PLANET. If you post the modified version of your txt file, we can take a look for problems.

Here is the table for Social Engineering in Alpha Centauri.

#SOCIO
ECONOMY, EFFIC, SUPPORT, TALENT, MORALE, POLICE, GROWTH, PLANET, PROBE, INDUSTRY, RESEARCH
ECONOMY, EFFIC, SUPPORT, TALENT, MORALE, POLICE, GROWTH, PLANET, PROBE, INDUSTRY, RESEARCH
Politics, Economics, Values, Future Society
Frontier, None, +MORALE,
Police State, DocLoy, ++POLICE, ++SUPPORT, --EFFIC
Democratic, EthCalc, ++EFFIC, ++GROWTH, --SUPPORT
Fundamentalist, Brain, +MORALE, ++PROBE, --RESEARCH
Simple, None, +EFFIC,
Free Market, IndEcon, ++ECONOMY, ---PLANET, -----POLICE
Planned, PlaNets, ++GROWTH, +INDUSTRY, --EFFIC
Green, CentEmp, ++PLANET, ++EFFIC, --GROWTH
Survival, None, +SUPPORT,
Power, MilAlg, ++MORALE, ++SUPPORT, --INDUSTRY
Knowledge, Cyber, ++RESEARCH, +EFFIC, --PROBE
Wealth, IndAuto, +INDUSTRY, +ECONOMY, --MORALE
None, None,
Cybernetic, DigSent, ++EFFIC, ++PLANET, ++RESEARCH, ---POLICE
Eudaimonic, Eudaim, ++GROWTH, ++ECONOMY, ++INDUSTRY, --MORALE
Thought Control, WillPow, ++POLICE, ++MORALE, ++PROBE, ---SUPPORT

Must have been the tabs. Works fine now!