Unfortunately this pretty much breaks the second big law of software engineering. That is that throwing more people at a project in the late stages of development actually slows down the development cycle.
The first law is hofstaeders (spelling?) law. Any software engineering project will take longer than you think, even if you take into account hofstaeders law.
There are many reasons why that's the case. When I first started to code, I thought writing pages after pages of code was cool. It's not until later that I realize small, compact, bug free code is much more beautiful and harder to write. Granted, I went through a period of C coding where using the bit operators and take advantage of the return code of 0, 1, etc. to combine them in endless parenthesis, essentially shrink 30 lines code into 1 was "cool." That was "cool" but too difficult for an average programmer to figure out and it can be very time consuming to figure out and fix later on.
Good code is hard to write, it should be short, compact, well formatted, and documented so it is easier to maintain. I found more often than not, program has a way to outlive their planned useful life if a particular program/product is successful.
We have too many people who don't know how to code well who are managers and managers who are chasing short term targets and disregard long-term profit. I lost track how often I got asked during job interview "how many lines of code have you written?" Granted, as I move up in seniority, such questions become less but still, even asking that question shows me what the interviewer think. As far as managers chase short term profit over long term, Civ5 is a good example of that. Push the product out early, so what if it's not even ready for "beta" stage, you got Mp feature right? We can advertise MP on the box! Wait, don't complain MP is unplayable, you can play it! I don't want to hear all these negatives, they all work, so what if Civ5 isn't for builders? Players won't realize that, they are too stupid, they will pay us lots of money in the beginning, we just need to hype this game with pretty graphics, send them out to reviewers where the problems won't be obvious, bribe/threaten review sites/media, we'll advertise/pay you if you write good reviews.
I bought my Civ5 at Fry's. The shelf was almost empty and the clerk told me they sold hundreds in 2 days or so. Being a Civ fan, I happily bought Civ5.
Unlike Civ4, where I actually stayed up and lost sleep to play, I never did that with Civ5. You can argue it's my older age, my real life priorities changed but I will say what I feel. Civ5 is just not as fun as previous Civs. Yes, age does play a part and I treasure my sleep more but if a game is fun, I will stay up for it. Case in point, I asked friends to join me in games, even asked them to buy games to play with me. I did that with Civ4. I never did it with Civ5. If a friend bought Civ5, great, hey let's play MP, err, no, because it's lagging so bad, it's unplayable. We don't even exchange tips on how to play Civ5 better, unlike Civ4.
To OP: hypothetical is just hypothetical. Unless the top management realize they're killing the goose that's laying the golden egg by harvesting the golden egg way too early, nothing will change.
If Civ5 really did great sale, I expect a much much much better patch/support system. They obvious don't care enough to address many glaring problems and this game has been out for a while. They care about us, just not enough. Guess what, this is the last Civ game I'm buying and I will never buy another Civ game right when it's out because fooled me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me and I have no intention of being the fool myself. I will wait for a few weeks/months, see how the feedback is, then purchase Civ6 (if there's any).
They will have to actually do their best to make the design they went with work.
minus the typewriters of course 
I even wrote a small post about why i think a new Pirates! soon would be great timing :
