[Karibu]

I can answer your question. First of all, they did not have any leader in the developement group. They had artistic leader (IIRC), but no project leader. Any coder can imagine what is the result if there is no good leadership in a LARGE project. MOO3 is very large.

Secondly, they tried to achieve too much and made regrettable compromises in the way. They tried to make a game, where player would be like a real emperor. What does a real emperor do? He decides to start a war, but do not war himself. He decides that education is important but he do not build schools. You get the point.

Where did this lead to? Player makes policies, which AI uses to build up / manage planets, colonize and research. What is left to player? Designing new ship models (very crappy way, I would say), building spies one by one(you can't make them "repeat build"), diplomacy (choices are basically to offer tech trade which AI rarely accepts, increase current money and research trade and start a war), changing tax rates (when unrest goes too high, this is every turn nightmare when you first rise them and next turn lower them. Every planet separately) and most importantly: push the TURN BUTTON.

What about two most important strategy game factors: combat and science?

COMBAT: You get realtime 3D screen, where you see little dots inside pentagram. Controlling them is to click pentagram and point it to the enemyforce. That is attack. Forget the neat tactics you used in MOO2. They don't exist. Then you see little lights and little dots going around and sometimes disappearing (if out of sensor range). How far your weapons carry? You can't see any "sphere of range" or "sphere of sight" around your task force. Only way to find out is to attack. There is no any sign or knowldge how far enemy is in combat screen. Not a one. Did I mention furious clicking and scrolling? You can't see the combat area at one time. You don't have that little strategic map (like in MOO2) beside tactic map. Oh no. You scroll and click when trying to keep your forces alive and think "where the hell is my task force?"

SCIENCE: You have 6 areas of science (like in MOO1). Economy, energy, social science, physical science, biology and mathematics. All you can do is to set mentioned policies, where you emphatize research and change the percentual distribuition between the fields. What happens? You get new inventions every other turn and soon you lose your interest on those. For some bizzarre coincidence, all hand guns look same, all engines look same, all biological devices look same, all ship guns look same...

Oh, and when you have this new and fancy fleet which has mass drivers, guess if you are able to refit them to be Armor piercing mass driver? CORRECT!! You can't even give your ships a new paint after they are built!

LEADERS: You get one or two leaders early game. They die in 10 turns if you have not chosen to have supreme spying skills (spies at home defend you). Did I mention of the bug which gets your leader to get killed every turn and new one appearing the next turn? Oh, by the way, you can forget the leader experince, ship experience and YES! YES! NO SHIP LEADERS. HURRAH!

GALAXY SCREEN: You can zoom in and out. For some reason, starlanes and system names appear only when you have the maximum zoom. Actually, all the details disappear if you zoom out, expect the star colors. Try to find any specific planet in a huge galaxy. Next thing worse is to find a specific grain of sand in a football field looking through toilet paper roll.

Hmm... I think I stop here before I get sarcastic. Complete list of things you can find in MOO3 forums.

Karibu has spoken