Right, i wasn't entirely clear on what the implications of this are. You said they have a good track record. The current context of the thread is the revival

Right, i wasn't entirely clear on what the implications of this are. You said they have a good track record. The current context of the thread is the revival of a game series 12 years after its last entry. This means they'll need to do a vast amount of work in updating both the graphics and the gameplay in order to produce a worthwhile successor. (Note worthwhile and good are not the same. It's entirely possible to make a good game that won't be worthwhile for a large portion of the possible audience.) One of the examples you cite towards their track records is a game that had success, but was built in a completely different way from what they do now. (Immediately after the inspiration thus not requiring a leap in graphics; and gameplay-wise with a smaller feature set.) Thus it doesn't seem to me that Company of Heroes is a particularly useful indicator for what they'll do with AoE 4. (Edit: Also, tbh, due to what S:HOWW2 is (in simple terms, multiple games combined), the decisions of which parts to keep were trivial. I don't want to go into detail here as the post is already big enough, but i recommend investigation of the details.)