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I agree with a number of the other suggestions here, especially Wesnoth. However, one that seems to have been missed is Globulation2. It's a RTS but without focus on individual units.

There aren't any missions so far, but I've spent quite a bit of time playing "custom" games on the different maps that are there. You must use Nikowar as the AI if you want any challenge at all (Nikowar does do an ok job, especially if you play against a few of them). There's also LAN and Internet gaming options.

Absolutely. But it's not a freedom (unless you conflate the meaning of "freedom" with "right").

I never said it(murder) was either a right or a freedom, I was merely explaining why the activity is legislated against. You were the one that said "thinking about it, murder is freedom for the murderer".

I'll need proof that there are no commercial artists who would stop creating once they stop being compensated.

I probably can't give you proof of that, since you modified artists with commercial. When I used the word artist in the statement you quoted, I backed it up by the next statement referring to people planting flowers in their yard. Perhaps you don't consider that artwork, but as they say "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". I can however give you proof of artists creating because they are driven to do so, regardless of monetary compensation, but I shouldn't have to, as a quick perusal of many websites across the internet should make that very clear. If not, take a look up and down the street while you are out one day and see all the cars with aftermarket products that enhance their looks. I'll admit that some look tacky, as do the plastic pink flamingos, but you can see that people create art all the time. In fact, I'm willing to bet that most people create art in some form or another, even if it's just a simple arrangement of furniture. Before we had TV, many people spent their time doing crafts such as quilting, knitting, woodwork, making bird houses out of gourds, etc. In fact, there are so many examples of people creating art for the pleasure of doing so, instead of making a living doing this, that I have a hard time understanding how we will run out of new artworks to share, as our civilization is built around this simple fact. As I said earlier, we are only in danger of running low on high budget artwork, but we will only run just so low on that. The money that is saved by not having to support such art as that will bring it back to a more sustainable level where more people are happy.

Current art creation rates have been dependent, for years, on culture penetration.

We have just the created the most valuable tool that allows for the deepest culture penetration known to mankind. The internet and ability to share files are having a larger impact on our culture than the spice trade and trade in native artifacts across the world ever did.

Again, I'll need some evidence.

Have a child. Raise him or her. Will you hang his/her drawings on the refrigerator? Will you take a picture of it to share with your friends?

To top all of this off, take a look at this:

http://wesnoth.org/
http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page (cause civilization should be free ;))
http://www.simutrans.com/
http://www.globulation2.org/

Art, and the human desire to create will die when the last man dies. We are never in danger of losing this, as this is why we live. I pulled most of those links from a quick browsing at http://happypenguin.org/ , but you can look around more places for more things. I for one would be willing to pay an ISP to maintain access to these works. If others are willing to pay for access to the works then we'll not be in danger of losing them. We are only in danger of losing what we don't want, presuming that we don't lose our civilization to some catastrophe. We have nothing to fear by the removal of these monopolies that inhibit our creativity. This is what these people who control those works and regulate the creation of new works have done their best to make you believe.

• The Ur-Quan Masters, if you missed Star Control 2 before it was open sourced.
• Globulation 2 is still a bit pre-release, but the game is playable and has a lot of potential.
• Oolite is a faithful recreation of Elite, but with massively updated graphics. It's certainly not a modern game, but it's a wonderful nostalgia trip if you played the original.
• OpenTTD is an open source clone of Transport Tycoon Deluxe, which fixes a lot of the irritating misfeatures in the original while remaining totally addictive.

There are quite a lot of fun games in the list, but these are the ones I've played and remember enjoying.

Globulation

I've played a little OSS RTS game called Globulation 2, it sounds just like the game you describe. Even though it's unfinished, it's a lot of fun to play and, and to give these commands (such as "Make a building here", "Attackers stand here" etc). It suffers in larger/longer games when units trip over each other and starve to death, or cannot survive the trip from the battlefront to the inn, but I think these issues can be resolved.
Try it out:
http://globulation2.org/

I bought (as in paid full price for) most of the games that Loki (remember them) ever ported to Linux. I still play Alpha Centauri sometimes - it still runs on modern Linux (though sadly their port of Civ3 no longer runs - doesn't get on with modern libraries in some way I haven't bothered to diagnose). I bought Neverwinter Nights when it first came out, because it was available in a Linux port (and it still runs very nicely, and yes, I still sometimes play it - mostly user-generated content, too). And I'm one of the only 597 people world-wide who have so far pre-ordered Apricot.

And that's kind of the point.

It costs money to develop commercial games; quite a lot of money. The people who develop them want to sell them. If there were enough Linux users prepared to spend real money on games, we'd have more commercial games. Over the last few weeks I've been playing (and really enjoying) The Witcher. It runs on an updated version of Bioware's Aurora engine, so presumably it wouldn't be hard to port it to Linux. But I don't expect we'll see a Linux port, because Atari, who sell it, clearly don't think enough of us would pay for it. And sadly I think they're probably right.

I've haven't found many open source game projects which are compelling to me. There are plenty of good ideas out there, and half-finished projects. Globulation is quite polished and seems to me quite innovative, and plays well; but it's also quite shallow - you'll enjoy it for a week but you won't still be playing it in a year. Oolite is genuinely good and you might still be playing it in a year - but that's largely because it is a faithful reconstruction of Elite, which is one of the great classics of computer games. Flightgear may be good but it isn't my thing.

To create a new game takes a lot of vision and a lot of work. Until you've done a lot of work it's hard to communicate the vision, so it's hard to recruit people. And even then, too many of the talented people prefer to tinker with some project of their own which they'll never get finished, than co-operate to deliver someone else's vision. I'd like to be wrong on this. But what I see on Freshmeat is lots of 'alpha' and 'beta' projects, and very little that's genuinely playable.

First would have to be TA Spring, a fully 3d reimplementation of Total Annihilation and many mods and maps for it.

Then Warzone 2100 (Resurrection), a revival of a great commercial RTS game that was Freed a few years ago.

Bos Wars is by far the best and most polished of all the games based on the Stratagus(formerly FreeCraft) engine, but

Also, Globulation 2 is pretty fun, if a bit less deep than the others in terms of strategic options.

Finally, Glest is a fun from-scratch fantasy RTS game, not as polished as the others though.

Those are the ones I have installed. Of them, I play TA Spring the most, and Glest the least.

Wesnoth hasn't worn out its welcome for me in years.
Mostly due to continually improving graphics and a ton of campaigns. Some rather well written.
And of course plenty of online action.
You might like http://globulation2.org/ too.
And of course http://happypenguin.org/ for countless others.
I just know that while I've been a Star Control fan since the SC1 days, Wesnoth and Spring
are my two big ones these days for TBS and RTS.

• bzflag http://www.bzflag.org/
• armagetronad http://www.armagetronad.net/
• warsow http://www.warsow.net/
• alien arena http://red.planetarena.org/
• xmoto http://xmoto.sourceforge.net/
• tumiki fighters http://tumiki.sourceforge.net/ this is a port of a win game tho
• frozen bubble http://www.frozen-bubble.org/
• sturmbahnfuhrer http://www.sturmbahnfahrer.com/
• globulation 2 http://globulation2.org/wiki/Main_Page/

Some Open Source Games

1. Lincity-NG
2. Globulations 2
3. Abuse-SDL
4. The Battle for Wesnoth
5. Solar Wolf
6. Boson
7. FreeCiv