Well, having worked with a development team for a couple of years, I can sympathize with CAs testing issues. Sometimes, when you've been working on something for so long, some bugs just fly past your head without you even realizing it. It's like using that cranky 6-year-old PC you just don't want to throw away. You grow so used to its little quirks that you're inured to crud that other people will find impossibly frustrating. That's why, when I was doing testing, my boss insisted I spend as little time with the program as possible - so that I wouldn't fall into those little self-troubleshooting routines.

I hate testing myself. It's an endless chore that has to be repeated every time so much as a single line of code is changed. And, for that matter, the CA test team really might never have actually *played* the game. At least when I was working on testing, the dev team gave me a list of variables to test and that's all I did. For weeks. I never actually had an "organic" experience so to speak. Just methodically poking holes in anything that might fall apart - e.g, 1 click variable 1 + 1 click variable 2 + hold variable 2 for three minutes + click variable 4 + click variable 3 etc. I just followed a set test plan and never actually *used* the program I was working on.

That's for a simple data gathering program. Something like ETW... well, let's just say that I would *never* want to test something like that ever.

Still, that's not going to stop me from bitching the hell out of the AI. On normal, the damn thing gets stuck behind walls to the point it doesn't actually just do the intelligent thing and hop over the wall and take cover on the opposite side when I've waltzed around them and hit them from behind. It garrisons buildings in the middle of nowhere, isolated from the bulk of its troops, charges cavalry straight across my line of fire, forms a fucking square in the face of 2 line, 2 grenadier, 3 6pdrs and 2 18pdrs, and generally demonstrates the intelligence of a sackful of rocks. What I'd give for a learning AI that'd take a players tactics apart and react intelligently to them.

I've only had two crashes so far. One immediately after a naval battle against some pirates and another when moving some ships around. Annoying, but not gamebreaking.