As a former member of the U.S. Army and a veteran of the first Gulf War, I am well aware that armies are designed to go places and break things. In Basic Training we were taught how to shoot and use a bayonet, not how to distribute food off the back of a pickup truck.

That said, the U.S. military is not full of bloodthirsty killers. Sure, you may occasionally run into the REMF yahoo who is eager to "go to war" but any soldier, sailor, airman or Marine with time under his or her belt will know the sobering facts of war: deployment away from ones' family and the potential loss of life.

These guys also are well aware of the fact that you don't earn the trust and favor of the people you are trying to liberate by killing indiscriminately....which is the key motivation behind the development of smart munitions such as cruise missiles and laser-guided bombs.

And these are the weapons that can be more accurately guided (not just at the bad guys but away from the innocents) by the kind of flying robot discussed earlier. If nothing else, it can give a squad leader a birds-eye-view of the area so he can avoid taking his people into an ambush or getting civilians caught in a crossfire.

I agree with the parent poster; MOO3 is not ready for prime time. As said elsewhere in this thread, the AI is buggy (will almost never attack, loves to build troop ships) and there are DirectX issues.

MOO3 is all about macromanagement, says developer Quicksilver...and that's all well and good, except they took away all ability to get down "in the weeds" and do the sorts of things people loved to do in MOO2, like build custom ships and command them in battle.

Sure, you can specify what types of weapons, engines and defensive systems a particular class of ship has, but when it comes to combat your control is limited to a particular battle group with the options "patrol", "attack", "move", "stop" and "retreat".

Finally, the graphics are less than stellar. Yes, I agree that gameplay is more important than graphics but MOO3 appears to be a step backward in many ways from MOO2. Combat, for instance, consists of a green grid on a black background; most ships are depicted as tiny grey or brown dots. There isn't a starfield to be seen.

The GUI is also lackluster, cumbersome, and reminicent of the Windows 95 interface. While planet and diplomacy animations are nice, a suite of generic icons are used for technologies -- a far cry from MOO2's research animation which showed a member of your race standing by a rotating custom depiction of the newest gadget.

Did I mention that there was no way to rename planets or star systems, nor choose player colors as in MOO2?

The MOO3 player community is making great strides to improve the game, but there is plenty of left to do on Quicksilver's part. I might add that the only official comment received from the developer so far has been from the art director, who says that they're working on updating the manual. After so many years of development and testing -- and over a month between Gold status and release -- one really has to wonder what the hell is going on at Quicksilver, and if they truly intend on making a mediocre game great. I fear that they will release a single AI-strengthening patch, then wash their hands of the whole affair.

Some people love MOO3, and I say: good for them. Those of you who loved the previous version, be warned: this game is not like MOO2 and is as problematic as the first (pre-patch) release of that game.

Galactic Civilizations, at this point, would appear to be the wiser choice.