I'm gonna say
1: Neverwinter Nights 2. I LOVED the first series and played it and all the expansions. Something about NWN2 has just not interested me, though.
2: Star Wars: Empire at War and Forces of Corruption. The game has potential, but the combats get way too tedious for me. Taking over a single system is way too difficult.
3: Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. I longed for a super hero game after i got tired of City of Heroes. This got good reviews. It was too simple and not what I wanted, though.
I'm going to go against the Master of Orion 3 hate, however. I did buy the game when it orginally came out. I didn't like it at first, either. It sat on the shelf for years unplayed. I had a copy of MoO2 that I played sometimes instead. Then recently I was looking for a game that would let me model the type of setting and combats from the Honor Harrington and Starfire book series by David Weber. Sins of a Solar Empire is fun, but doesn't quite pull it off without lots of capital ships. Galactic Civ 2 is also fun, but not what I wanted, either with the lack of tactical combat. Then I remembered MoO3, and it's large scale of managing an empire.
I found that MoO3 has been heavily updated and modded by the community since it was released. I got the Strawberry and Tropical mods and found the Strawberry to be the best version for what I wanted. So, 6 years later MoO3 is the EXACT mix of empire management and tactical combat I've been looking for over the last year.
So, for those of you who dismissed the game years ago, I urge you to try out the Strawberry and Tropical mods of the game. It is very different from the original game and plays much more like I hoped it would when it originally came out. Sure, the graphics and interface are dated in comparison to today's games. However, you can get 1024x768 resolution instead of the original 800x600 with the mods, so that helps with playing the game now. I still find MoO2 fun even though it has very old graphics. And now I can play on a bigger scale with MoO3 and have armadas of up to 180 capital ships attacking my enemies.