Could MP ever Peak again?

[Puzz3D]

The original STW (The one in the red box not the Warlords Edition) had the best mp of any Total War game to date. Last man standing never got boring (mp participation rose continuously during the year that original STW was in use) because the tactical gameplay had great depth and variety, and the units were so well balanced that you didn't need unit limiting rules, although, you had to be an expert to handle the warrior monk rush because that unit was out of balance by 10%. The units have to be balanced to 10% or better for the tactical gameplay to achieve its potential because multiplayers can take advantage of imbalances that small.

It's a fact that mp participation dropped to 30% of what it had been under STW with the release of the Warlords Edition (STW/MI). The reason was poor playbance notwithstanding the introduction of new unit types and different game modes. The battle engine's designer, Longjohn, didn't balance this version which is why it had poor playbalance. He returned for MTW which is why the playbalance in that game improved, and this revived the mp community. However, by this time he was not balancing the units to better than 25% which he had decided was good enough. Eventually the players uncovered the imbalances and the community declined, although, it took quite a while to discover the exploits because there were such a large number of unit types and differing factions in the game. Longjohn left sometime during the development of RTW, and we all know the consequences of that not only to the playbalance but also to the battle engine itself.

With Empire CA is no longer designing a rock, paper, scissors battle engine. It seems to me that this should be easier to balance since it's a shooting game. However, I no longer see much interest on the part of CA to fine tune their games for improved playbalance. They are content to pitch their game to players who aren't interested in playbalance. These players may actually want imbalances that they can exploit to exist. Of course, it's self defeating because eventually lots of players learn the exploits and then the tactical gameplay converges to a limited scope rather than diverging to the rich tactical gameplay that could be contained in a well designed battle engine. And, that's the rub because it's easier for CA to design a poor engine with poor playbalance than a good engine with good playbalance. There is no incentive for CA to do the later if players are content with the former.

I don't want to spend my time learning exploits, and from what I can see there are a lot of highly skilled players who feel the same way because they no longer play total war mp.