There are no changes coming. If they wanted a feedback, or were open to a course change, then they wouldn't have a release date set for the next month, and they would have kept players in the loop, like they did before the silence.
They gave up like with champions of anteria. They couldn't make a good game, so they just want to release what they have. They can't afford to keep developing the game. They will sell what they have, because they do not believe the additional development they would have to put to make the changes would pay off.

What we have now is not a result of passionate development where the creators are proud of what they made.
It's a product of resignation after several iterations - "eh, can't make this work and it's taking too long. Just remove the stuff we couldn't figure out, pack up what we have and what works, sell it and let's move on. We're not going to get anything good out of it, so let's get back as much money as we can"

Wow, I am surprised. I was sure the team gave up with the game, but seems I was wrong.
Still, the fact the message speaks about "quality" rather than the design /gameplay itself might mean they will just keep fixing bugs and sprucing up the UI :S

@aorus2017 See https://discussions.ubisoft.com/topic/106705/current-issues-following-tuesday-s-game-update-12?lang=en-US for more info

Now I'm pleasantly surprised. Feedback from the players should really help in making the game better. Fingers crossed!

@katrijn1979
I remember that at some point in the past preorders were cancelled and money returned, so maybe yours was auto cancelled as well. Try checking your emails / bank account.
It was a very long time ago, several months

Now I'm pleasantly surprised. Feedback from the players should really help in making the game better. Fingers crossed!

Wow, I am surprised. I was sure the team gave up with the game, but seems I was wrong.
Still, the fact the message speaks about "quality" rather than the design /gameplay itself might mean they will just keep fixing bugs and sprucing up the UI :S

There are no changes coming. If they wanted a feedback, or were open to a course change, then they wouldn't have a release date set for the next month, and they would have kept players in the loop, like they did before the silence.
They gave up like with champions of anteria. They couldn't make a good game, so they just want to release what they have. They can't afford to keep developing the game. They will sell what they have, because they do not believe the additional development they would have to put to make the changes would pay off.

What we have now is not a result of passionate development where the creators are proud of what they made.
It's a product of resignation after several iterations - "eh, can't make this work and it's taking too long. Just remove the stuff we couldn't figure out, pack up what we have and what works, sell it and let's move on. We're not going to get anything good out of it, so let's get back as much money as we can"

I think the soldiers being stuck is a result of you sending too many soldiers to attack, and then they getting confused if there is more soldiers than space in the building (on the video I can see 3 soldiers trying to get into building with 2 spots left only).

As for the crashes and freezes - I would imagine it might be something with the map - is that some custom made map? Do you have such issue on regular maps?

As for buildings not being fully staffed - from what I noticed when your soldiers go out to defend, then after beating the enemy sometimes they will not return to the building, but go to the warehouse instead. But the building still thinks their spot is taken, so no new soldiers will be sent to replace. Haven't found a way around it.

@ubi-milky
Hi, thanks for your reply. Unfortunatelly game settings didn't change anything. I did try changing refresh rate of my monitor, and after increasing it to 120 hz, rather than decreasing, the flickering was greatly reduced.

However, tha game still looked kind of ugly, I remember the old version looked much better, especially when zooming in.
And yesterday I found some HD mod, which works for History Edition as well, and improves the shadows, textures and general quality of objects. I hope it's ok if I link it: https://settlers4-hd.com/: (https://settlers4-hd.com)
Might help other people with similar issues

That's the screenshot from history edition. When clicking on a an existing flag, or the yellow flag blueprint, the window appears to the right of the cursor. In the old version the window would appear over the cursor, roughly where I drew the blue rectangle, so the next (second) click would immediatelly press the button to plop a flag, or start road construction. It seems to work for flag placement (as the second click places the flag, even though the cursor is nowhere near the button), but it doesn't work for road construction

As was stated in the old forum:
https://forums.ubisoft.com/showthread.php/1979117-Settlers-IV-shadows-option-missing-in-config: (https://forums.ubisoft.com/showthread.php/1979117-Settlers-IV-shadows-option-missing-in-config)

There seems to be no option to enable hardware shadows. Not only they look much nicer than this black pixel pattern, but the current shadows cause heavy subpixel flickering on my monitor, which hurts my eyes. If you're not sure what I mean - in this test https://iristech.co/subpixel-flicker-test/: (https://iristech.co/subpixel-flicker-test) my monitor flickers heavily for boxes 1 and 3

Alternatively please allow us to download the old version of the game, I could always tweak the settings there and make it work.

I think Anno 1800 is already packed with content. Don't think it's possible to put more into it without making it even more chaotic and complex in unfun way.

Maybe it's time to restart development of Settlers

In the meantime I'm having a blast playing.

I would imagine you both did something wrong, or missed something, but with no info provided we can't really help.