EA's effort in madden has damaged my faith in them (and madden is one of their biggest games!). They consistently release beta-quality garbage. In 2007, you could literally rush for 3000+ yards in a season, and win more than half of your games online...just by running goal line off tackle to the left. I've been on both sides of games in that year where with 3 seconds left, people run that play with 80 yards because it has a higher probability to score than a hail mary...by a LOT?!
Then in 08 they had brett farve randomly dancing sideways until he goes out of bounds, uncontrollable and unsackable, for a loss. They also have the stupid ability to throw high bullets and have ANY WR one-hand it. ANYBODY. Even the 3rd string tight end for a crappy team can one hand it and fall forward for a TD (even though the best WR's in the world ever could only make catches like that once in a while)...all the while allowing for garbage defensive formations to stop the run...like running dime vs goal line successfully! There's also the WR double pass, which basically just glitches people. You throw a "lateral" to a WR, who can then pass...except for nobody passes with him. They run, for a guaranteed 5 yards, because whoever was covering him either 1) dropped into zone the second he got lateraled to or 2) seeing his man stay back, rushed the QB, leaving the WR open.
Basically, this leads the games to be very one-dimensional as stopping these strategies is extremely arduous, and even when their best counters are used against them they still afford higher odds than any normal offense/defense would. Good bye, realism.
I can just see a civ equivalent of this now...let's see...good example? Here: AXE RUSHING IS ALWAYS THE BEST TACTIC. That would be an EA-Type balance for civ 4. Or archers would wind up with 5 str, or a random faction like the celts would have a unit that is glitched, so that rather than +10% vs cities the celt UU gets +100%, just by pure error, which would then NEVER be patched.
I sure hope if EA buys this out, they allow autonomy, because they sure as hell can't balance anything, and typically don't seem to care to.