Lionhead has released 'beta' patches when working under EA. CA could do it if they wanted too.

I know a lot of money is involved, but the management has got to decide what these issues will do to the name 'total war' and 'CA', Rome was the series big breakthrough, the TW name alone could have been worth millions. Now I fear the every reviewer is going to remind as of the remaining bugs in RTW when they review BI, not good advertising.

It makes sense for Activision of course (I always thought they released buggy games) since they lost the TW name, but wouldn't sega be interested ? Are they planning any future TW games ?

Despite what everyone says, i think Rome only has one serious flaw: the AI. It's serious because any idiot playing the game will notice and, after a certain point, get fed up with it. I hope they will improve it for BI, but maybe it's already too late. How many people will still be playing RTW (compared to the amount that bought it) ? I think most people will be ready to move on to other things (B&W 2, Rise & Fall, AoE 3 !) by the time BI gets released.

Then again, I don't know much about marketing, i could be wrong.