[Freeciv] freeciv beats Civ 2!

[ANDREW SCHULMAN <SCHULMAN.ANDREW@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello all.  Last year I used to play freeciv a lot and contribute to this list. 
Now (to my sorrow) I've moved from unix to PC.  Instead of trying to play
freeciv for Win through an X server (very slow), I decided to try the Real Game.
 So I bought Civ 2 for $20.  I'd never played it before, but I figured it would
be the gold standard which freeciv was trying to meet.  But guess what: freeciv
is better!  Here are some of the ways:

- the "goto" command in Civ 2 is so poor as to be useless.  When choosing a path
it ignores roads and even ocean squares! so that it's not unusual for a piece to
get stuck moving back and forth between the same two squares.  I have to move
pieces manually, which is impractical in large games, and also...

- the view in Civ 2 is tilted 45 degrees with respect to the grid.  This makes
for a pretty picture, but it makes movement unintuitive and hard to get right
without making the program show the grid.  So, it's easy to accidentally go off
a road (which I'm having to move my pieces manually along; see above) and lose
movement points.

- the city report in Civ 2 is much less useful.  In freeciv this report has more
information, you can perform many actions from it, and of course it's
customizable.

- Civ 2 has no window for collecting game messages.  Instead each message pops
up in a separate window, one at a time, and is gone forever once it's dismissed.
 This makes it hard to manage large games.

- in the city popup, where freeciv uses three numbers to show the
food/production/trade gained from working a square of land, Civ 2 uses a row of
symbols.  So a square with F/P/T 2/6/0 in Civ 2 contains 2 grain symbols and 6
shields.  This crowds the display and makes it hard to count how many of what
come from each square.  Same for other graphical display, e.g. science
progress-- long rows of symbols convey less information than a simple number.

There are ways in which Civ 2 is better, such as diplomacy and some of the
graphics.  But I expect that these have improved since I played last, and that
of course is one of the strengths of a free game.

So the point is, to all of you who helped to make freeciv as good as it is now: 
you've done a great job!

Andrew.

-----------------------------------------
Andrew E. Schulman
Office of Ground Water and Drinking Water
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
401 M St. SW (4607)
Washington DC 20460
202-260-4197
202-260-3762 fax
schulman.andrew@xxxxxxx