Well, this thread doesn't have much to do with MOO3 anymore...
I own and still play SMAC, especially the expanded variant (Alien Crossfire). I played Civ2 for years. I never bought Civ3 because of gameplay issues I'd read about - this is the first I've heard of it having other problems. But I had been considering getting it despite these because:
I own and still play Europa Universalis - more recently EU2 - and that definitely had bugs and 'features' that needed work, but it was a fun thing to play even out of the box, and Paradox worked hard with the user community to improve it.
Similarly, SE has improved over the years. I still play that too - obviously!
Even a hard-core wargame such as Uncommon Valor from Matrix Games is now up to Version 2.20, having fixed many gameplay issues, and some more serious faults. (I don't own this yet but I'm likely to buy it in the next couple of months or so.)
So I think that in general it's wrong to think that you'll get a finished, polished product at first issue. As complex as games like these have become it needs 'road testing' to fix it within the limited resources of the companies we buy from. Yes, even EA - Last I looked they didn't have the budget of the US military, and look what
they sometimes come up with!
Steve.