So what went wrong with this game?
There's a very simple explanation: the guys who coded Moo1 and Moo2 had absolutely nothing to do with Moo3. Wikipedia was very helpful in this regard.
The "WTF? scowl" that I had on my face while studying the user interface was definitely a "Kodak moment". The user interface looks like it was from the 1989 PC era.
After struggling with the unweildy interface, I got tired of watching the "build AI" controlling everything for me.
The tactical combat was a joke: it's played in real-time with simple commands like move and stop and I couldn't find a retreat button. As soon as I saw the graphics for the tactical combat ( imagine small blobs of pink flying across the screen ) my jaw hit the floor - I had not seen graphics like that since the 1982-1984 Acorn / Sinclair Spectrum era.
I could not uninstall this game fast enough, the funny thing is that even with the V1.25 patch, the game would not let me quit the game.
The good news is that I learned that people still play Moo2 using an emulator called DosBox.
This game is basically a cash-in, similar in concept to the Predator ( Predator vs. Alien ) or Terminator ( T3 ) movie franchises.