They did, though, start the process back with Stronghold 2, and continued With Stronghold Crusader 2... However, in the "extreme" version, the only extreme thing is amount of cheating instead of strategy. The missions, starting with the first one, are set up in such a way that you have to pause-unpause to build even basic walls and units before the continuous waves of attacks start. AI, of course, has unlimited money and produces units at fascinating speed, To mitigate this, they devised a "clever" trick - a legitimate cheat menu where "superpowers" are available (from summoning units to "air strikes"), the only limiting factor being the scale which has to recharge before you use those superpowers again. So, instead of making the game strategically challenging, they introduce impossible setup, cheating AI, and cheat menu for players. Way to put the last nail in the coffin of any stragety and to the whole series. The only redeeming value is that we get to play original Crusader in HD, but that, of course, is "hidden" if you are not aware that the game installs all versions at once and only makes shortcut for "extreme" crap.
The game is in that stage for over a year so I expected some level of playability, especially considering that after playing tutorial it seems like it's nearly-finished. However, barrinng some bugs I've encountered which I won't even mention because they're something I've expected on a early release, there are some things whch are so blatantly obvious and game breaking that I uninstalled after 2 hours of playing and frankly, regretting that I didn't get it on Steam because I'd get a refund, which is almost impossble to do on GOG. Namely 'tavern' quests are completely random or so it seems, so I got 2 levels of wine cellar and haven't yet got the Infirmary, which seems like a basic and neccesary upgrade. So I've got my adventurers getting debuffs (sepsis and infection) and literally slowly dying from the first quest, without any ability to do anything about it. Also even basic equipment is so rare in the game, and your adventurers (mostly) start bare handed. And I'm sure that there already are enough items among game assets (as can be seen in the tutorial mission), they're just not offered to you in any way except odd amulet or boot on every 3rd quest. Now it game was updated on a more regular basis that wouldn't be a problem, but from what I saw on forums updates come about every 6 months, just not worth the trouble nor money I've spent on it.
