Master of Orion 3 was supposed to be revolutionary. You were put into the shows of the leader of a galactic empire, and had to manage it from a distance. There were layers upon layers of AIs, making decisions that you could influence (or you could disable a few outright), representing various aspects of your government and bureaucracy. The fundamental flaw in this picture is the heavy limitations of the AI and how awful it is, and how little control over the actual empire you possess. At every turn you will be fighting AIs and their poor decisions, and struggling to get done what you actually want done. And to top it off, the game was remarkably buggy and unfinished even in its patched state.
MoO3's failure is legendary. It singlehandedly killed the entire space 4x genre for years until GalCiv2 breathed life back into it. Many a forum erupted in rage after the much hyped game turned out to be a steaming turd. Stay away at all costs, it's not even worth the price of admission as a curiosity. It's that bad.