Games

Well, to take a break from my math homework, I figured I would comment on the state of gaming:

If your not into FPS games (me), then you really don't have too many multiplayer options. The Age of Empires series is great, but the new versions are not improving (and have some pretty hefty system requirements). If anything Age of Empires 3 is worse (the whole home world thing reduces the fairness of multiplayer games by giving players who have played longer advantages) than the old versions. While I'm highly addicted to Age of Empires 2 (with the expansion), I would also like to find another good RTS for some variety. Empire Earth 2 is a potential candidate (and I have been meaning to play the demo), but a free alternative would be even better... Quite a while ago I tried a game called Globulation. I went and looked it up again (portage has been keeping it updated) and it looks like they have added networking code, and it is now quite playable. Globulation 2 is definitely worth a look, and can be found here. It is somewhat similar to Age of Empires but there are only a couple types of units and there is no micromanaging, you just assign so many units to a task and some nearby units (if they are boored) get to it. Glest, is another free RTS thats worth keeping track of, but it is only barely playable right now and has no multiplayer support.
The other alternative, if you don't like RTS there are a number of very good, open source, turn based strategy games, like Wesnoth and Freeciv (usually found at freeciv.org but the site seems to be down right now).