Quote Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube
Then again, in RTK9 there are 36 turns in a year, and the game is so vastly superior in some ways that one has to wonder why more mainstream strategy developers haven't caught on yet.
diminishing returns

it's cheaper to serve crap and get gold in payment than serve saphron laden foods to get whatever the going rate of the market is

but then there's creative talent and things like time constraints to deal with as well - they end up cancelling eachother out and some quality is lost when time constraints are put on creating something. Also, when repairs are hindered by said limits on the repairs - quality suffers by artificial means.

so far Valve is the only company I've encountered who can release what they want, when they want - and continue to have incredible support - patches whenever needed and a forum dedicated to answer customer tech issues and other problems the games have.

Rome does some things well, at a cost of other parts not.

Rome: Total War is a Pyrrhic Victory