[klausD]

I prefer good gameplay to eye candy as well.
(for example two games that I am currently playin is Uncommon Valor and SE IV at the moment)
But I am wondering why MoO3 is so badly reviewed..

Uncommon Valor - a very good game. And the most complex game I ever played. I cannot believe that your are "just" a casual gamer. One have to be rather a hardcore strategist to play this game.

MOO3 is not for everyones taste. It is not for the mainstream, because it has a lot of complexity deeply buried in it. For example ground combat units have up to 7 different values. You can group them in divisions, corps and whole armies. Each of these formations do have different advantages. You have tax sliders to control system tax, planetary tax and empire tax rates. You have 3 main governments and each of these have up to 5 subtypes. For example you can play a corporate democracy or a representative democracy and so on. You have advanced trade agreements and many more features. The list of complex game mechanics is long that i could write one hour without an end.

But the big problem is that the designers did not want to let you know the details and numbers. Only colour coded sliders. They dont also want to let you control something of the above mentioned features. Ok, you can control most of it, but its a pain in the arse (to recite a poster below), because you have to click in about 5times ! till you are able to change the production queues of a planet. And if you go to the next system to change something you have to click 5 times again. Oh man what a bad design.

And the game has no fun in it. Because its so tedious to make adjustments you will in the end do what the designers want you to do. Just collecting ships and fight it out. And the realtime combat system is soo bad. The most time you are looking for your ships and if you find them all you can do is watching the light show. Örkward.

But the game has some good things MM could use in SEV. Collecting ships and building task forces are very good in MOO3. And the spy system is VERY VERY good. Its much better than in every other 4X game I played. (only the intelligence gathering spy is missing, but everthing else is perfect)
Ship movement and starlanes are also very fine.

I hope this helps a little
klausD