its fun, i miss a lot of civ iii stuff. i miss the railroads and how easy it was to win by territory conquest. iii had a simpler interface, easier to sort thoguh things especially for miliatry upgrades and the like. but fun.
freeciv sounds definately cool. i'll check it out. civ III does too, next time i'm anywhere near a discount bin that might have it. agriculture and mining are the two legs, and transportation is, to me, the backbone and blood vessles of any believable world. environmental harmony of transportation and energy infrastructure are serious questions in the mundane world and lack of addressing or adiquitly simulating them in gameworlds, for me, seriously diminishes their suspension of disbelief. as it likewise does in too much of fictional writing. (i guess because i grew up with a close personal relationship to transportation infrastructure, my dad worked for the railroad, as a 'telegrapher'/towerman/clerk, in the stations. and i suppose most people don't notice or think about such things because all they have to do with their own lives mundanely is a lightswitch and a car. but really these are things that have not always been there and might not always be, quite probably won't always be as far as the car is concerned anyway). =^^= .../\...
I've been playing Civ ever since the first one. Civ IV has a lot of useless interface, especially the graphics which kill my video card and make the game slow. I have never played Civ for the graphics...and I have no idea why they had to put such an exaggerated amount there now. It does fix lots of the game problems, but it's still very easy to win. I love the whole civics and religion aspect. War is also so much more interesting with each unit having its own specifications (event though the upgrades are a bit too much)... I want the graphics of Civ II and all the posibility of Civ IV in one game... that would be great, and imagine the speed at which that shit would run.
I love this game, one of my favourites. I wish it wasn't so RAM intensive though, it really grinds down to a halt come endgame....