We need some community-wide plan to get more people into Empires, like advertising in Steam groups or inviting all our Steam friends. Which is hard when a forum rank is "Forum Troll", which kind of promotes being a dick.
I agree, the NS2 model is great. If you release content throughout development (like what overgrowth has done), and sell the alpha to people who have preordered (this is before the hype machine kicks in- don't want too much exposure for an alpha), you can ideally maintain funding until the thing is done. I'd pay full price for a true empires sequel. I don't really think F2P fits the empires model.
