They had plenty time, community was demanding for the balance changes, not for the UI changes, BR and other changes, those balance changes can be done in few minutes, but designing fancy avatars,pictures an animations takes more time, so you can't really defend them there if their priority is to deliver such things.
Money is not an issue and the game is still selling, it is a freaking remaster not a remake so the most expensive thing like the engine is the very same from 20 years ago, the income of this game was pure gains.
The servers are expensive but they are using the servers from the xbox game pass so the infrastructure is being held by microsoft and its big gaming project not the aoe team, so it is basically cheap given the big revenues from the service.
Money is not an issue and the game is still selling, it is a freaking remaster not a remake so the most expensive thing like the engine is the very same from 20 years ago, the income of this game was pure gains.
The servers are expensive but they are using the servers from the xbox game pass so the infrastructure is being held by microsoft and its big gaming project not the aoe team, so it is basically cheap given the big revenues from the service.