[Lemmy]

First, here's a preview:
http://gamespot.com/gamespot/stories...902095,00.html

About those feature cuts....do you realise how that most of these features aren't even in SE4, and that most also aren't even worth it.

-Customizing Your Empire's Color
-Customizing Your Ship's Look
-Customizing Your Homeworld's Name
-Customizing Each Star's Name You Conquer
-Seeing Pretty Stars On The Galaxy Map
-Bombs taken out???
-Not Able To Capture/Board Enemy Ships

Only 2 of those have real gameplay value, there are pleny of other things in MOO3 that aren't in SE4.

Even with all those features cut, there is plenty of game left to play. I think you should look at what is IN the game, not out, because then you could just as well say the SE4 sucks.

You have to keep in mind that MOO3 started as an ambitious project, by MOO fans. So off course, just like on this forum, you'll have a lot of ideas at, all meant to make a better game. QS has done a good job trying to incorporate most of those idea into MOO3, but it would be impossible to keep all of the ideas originally thought of, it would simply be to much, or to complicated, to...well, you get the idea, no matter how hard you try, not all concepts can work together, so some have to go.

Before people start bashing about feature cuts you heard about, i suggest looking at the game itself, and see how many innovative ideas are still in it.

Real-time combat is overrated, and almost always much worse than turn-based combat (as it encourages click-festing).

In general, yes, but i don't think MOO3 is like this.
From the moo3 site.

Consider: You've got a HUMONGOUS fleet. Bigger than anything you ever saw in MOO2. You've organized into... what? A dozen or so Task Forces. That dozen "pieces" is what you're commanding in real-time. And we're not talking "twitch" real-time, either. No, this is more like HARPOON, Death Star approaching Yavan "cinematic" real-time. Ample for you to think under the pressure and easy for you to issue commands on the Fleet and Task Force level.

For me it's actually a good sign that QS/IG delayed the release, after what happened with civ3/ptw.