Another employee's perspective on Ensemble Studios and AoE2's code base

Recently there has been some talk about the historic development of our game due to a new interview with former lead designer Sandy Peterson. Another person who has worked at Ensemble from somewhere in the 2000's till the end of Halo Wars is Richard Geldreich. He had already tweeted a few times about his experience at Ensemble, which he characterized as the best game development experience he's had.

However, he's more critical than Sandy about other things. He recently wrote a thread calling out the former management for spending on the MMO, and in retrospect agrees with Microsoft shutting Ensemble down due to that. He also claims that the Age1 and Age2 code bases are among the cleanest he's come across, and also states that he's seen Age1's code "be taken over by a new team and turned into total shit over time". Let's hope that wasn't Forgotten Empires (Geldreich has made some contributions to AOE:DE).