It looks like Moo3 is in trouble. The deadline for going Gold if they want to make the public release date of 'Q3' is upon us and there has been no further word, either official admission of further deadline slippage or reassurances of intent to make the deadline through some extra-ordinary measures. This quiet 'sliding by' has upset the community on the official forum and several threads have sprouted up complaining. Meanwhile, a new preview on gamers.com calls the current state of Moo3 'lackluster', meaning it is not anything noticably different from many other 4X games we've already seen. Given that there is no time left to perform any major re-design it looks like a 'public beta' cycle is the only thing that can save Moo3.
On the other hand, Civ III has had Yet Another Patch issued over the summer and rumours are now flying that an expansion pack featuring multi-player ability and other goodies will be released in October. The latest patch adds 8 new civilizations, let alone fixing various bugs and adjusting game-balance features. If this is the 'patch' then the expansion pack should be awesome. It looks like Civ III is finally worth acquiring, and it's what? Almost a full year after official release? Yep... So keep this in mind as Moo3 gets shoved half-baked out the door like some teenager being forced to go to school in the early morning. It may take a while to wake-up, but Moo3 it not necessarily as stupid as it will look on first impression.
We can look forward to the 'real' Moo3 next fall.