Who is supposed to keep updating the Elemental AI and all that stuff if you are modding*? Oh, your modded AIs will be used maybe?

* in your sabbatical, I mean

@Aractain: how many millions does someone need before they can do whatever they want?

Do you have a gold house?

Do you have a rocket car?

Seriously though (which is rare, since almost all my posts are based around a - bad - joke), thats a cool thing to do. Mods are a big part of PC gaming and personally one of my biggest interestes. I am an untalented modder possesing some knowladge and no skill but still I try and its satisfying even if you don't create anything anyone else would even care enough about to 'let you down gently'.

Modding to me is about the ultimate in customizing the game experince (or recreating it) which is something sorely lacking in console design in general - options. Other than strategy its the 'killer app' of the PC and I encourage anyone who likes to be creative to mod!

Do you already own huge tracts of land?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3YiPC91QUk

I'm sure the game will be left in capable hands in terms of patches and expansions. It's good every now and then to step back, take a break, and just do what you love for a while.

Some AI tutorials...

Can I be in charge in your absence? How about this....Can I be in charge if I pay you for any losses the company makes during my time in charge? I promise though when I make more Millions for the company you can keep that. I'll work them fools over too, just ask Scott. I promise not to bug you or anything , come on....let me take over, just for a little bit .

would be nice if you could also help wannbe modders / programmers to get into it... but that might be asking a bit to much of you some, how i think your greater then Sid mainly because you show yourself to us more often.

maybe even get some other people from stardock to do it or some outside of it like the guys for UT3 did a map making then for the limited edition

I thought thats why his business model was sucssesful in the first place, you know like slave labour - but legal.

Sounds awesome.   

Meh... if the game is done well and as open to modification as planned, there will be no expansion needed...

Modding isn't losing popularity because people are losing interest, people aren't modding because they CAN'T.  DRM and Steam often lock down games to the point where modders can't do much with them these days.  People would LOVE to mod Dawn of War 2 for example, but it's simply too much hassle and their modding forum has little in the way of interesting projects.

Which I don't get.  Mods are what keep games alive and popular years after their release.  The core game of Neverwinter Nights was poor at best, but modders kept the community going for a long time.  Warcraft 3 is the biggest example though.  The custom map DoTA was so popular, more than one company released retail games based on a game mod!