In it's current state, MOO3 is utter trash IMO. Its a mish-mash of ideas and designs that dont form a coherent game at all. The UI is amongst the worst I've ever seen for a strategy game (and that is saying something because I'm a veteran of Gary Grigsby's 'Pacific War'!!). Even past that, there is no 'wow-factor' in any part of the game. Its very dry and lifeless.
The game was originally conceptualized to move the player out of the role of 'microing' every decision and into the role of an emperor with a bureacuracy to run the day to day aspects. Your challenge was to run the government and determine policy, not fiddle with construction queues and planetary development. Somewhere along the line, that goal changed. They seem to have tried to move it back to the more traditional 4x game control level, but they left a lot of the bureaucratic aspects of the game in place. The result is a disjointed experience that leaves the player not knowing what he is supposed to do to PLAY the game.
On one hand you have to take an active role in certain aspects, but on the other, the UI makes it difficult to TAKE that active role. Ship construction, research, and planetary development are all areas where player micro is more or less required, yet because of the original goal of the game, its difficult to acually perform that micro.
Add to that the fact that the game gives you almost NO feedback from various actions (and almost no info on the inner workings) and you start to get the feeling that maybe the best things to do is to hit 'End Turn' and see what happens. The AI runs everything in your empire unless you specifically stop it and even then, it subtly changes things, forcing you to have to micro even more than if they just let you control everything in the first place.
Finally, the enemy AI is totally buggered at the moment. They apparently decided that it was to difficult to win in the beta-test, so they toned down the AI. This toning seems to having taken the form of a total lobotomy. The AI doesnt attack effective and in 90% of the cases, doesnt attack AT ALL. The diplomacy has ZERO feedback, so the actions that the AIs take appear completely random, despite the fact that one of the stated design goals was specifically to have AI races that acted with some sort of 'intelligence'.
SE4, on the other hand, is a labor of love by basically one programmer. Its cohesive and puts the player in control of almost all aspects of running an interstellar empire. Any aspects that the player WANTS to run are easily accessible and any that they dont want to run can be turned over the AI 'Ministers'. While the Ministers dont do as good of a job as complete human intervention, they are adequate to the task, especially late in the game where there are plenty of more interesting aspects to fiddle with.
All of the controls in SE are laid out in a logical and usable fashion. There is 'right-click' help available for almost everything. The graphics are spartan, but clear and functional. A by-product of this is the ability to completely import your own graphics and files. It really adds a lot of personality to the game when you run across the Klingons or the Empire or the Minbari rather than some of the stock races in SE4 or MOO3.
So, at the moment, I would say that SE4 is by FAR the better game. There are some aspects of MOO3 that might EVENTUALLY be better, but that depends on how quickly and effectively Quicksilver patches their game. In light of the constant delays in release and the way they pushed the game out in this utterly pathetic state, I'm not holding my breath on them getting it right anytime in the near future, if ever. My copy went back to the store yesterday. If at some point, they've patched it up and the majority of my issues with the game have been resolved, then perhaps I might consider purchasing it again, but until then, I'll stick with SE4 and enjoy not only the game, but the modding and the community.
If you read this far, then I owe you at least a 'Thank You'.
Talenn