This is sad but to be expected. I just don't get how you can ignore your dev team's feedback when you are designing a game and still be unaware of what your customers and potential customers want when you have a medium called the Internet which makes you able to communicate with pretty much anyone on the planet.
Ah well. If AoE4 fails then there will be no coh3.
The only observation with which I disagree here is your conclusion.
If SEGA paid approximately $26 million for Relic in 2013, my guess is that SEGA could sell on Relic and another developer would finish COH3. In fact, it has been at the back of my mind that SEGA may be using AoE4 as a marketing tool and could try to sell off Relic before the release of AoE4 - it would be a safer bet than waiting on the outcome of AoE4, when the value of the Relic asset could diminish.