The EB team has an understanding of the RTW engine. The M2TW engine is the same engine. Thus, EBII will be somewhat easy for the EB team to mod. Empires is a completely new engine for a completely different time period.

The official response is, "It is too soon to say at this point." However, there have been team members who have said they are not planning on moving on past EBII and learning the Empires engine.

Will some form of the EB team remain and move on to the next platform after EBII is completed? Who can say.

Will somebody try to mod Empires to make a classical era mod? Probably.