Good points Lahll, but we've been advised to adapt or go play another game. I'm seriously thinking about the second option. I really don't want to pay $50 for degraded gameplay, that lousy server we are forced to play on and the premature yanking of product support so CA can move on to the next project.

Strange thing for me about those cut sceens of the general dying is that I never see the general get killed. I can't defocus my attention from what I was doing fast enough to see what's happening in the cut sceen. I am concentrating on too many things in the middle of battle to instantly turn them all off. It's very disconcerting. Now, if I played the battles in a superficial way, I'd pick up on those cut sceens. I expect arcade mode with no fatigue and no morale to be very popular online.