We have 13 devs but only 9 of those ever worked on GD or it’s expansions. The rest were hired for the town-builder and another project. ; )
I think it’s true though, that experience and trying not to get too out of control with ambitious features is what allowed us to be efficient and ship with such a small team.
It can be very easy to get caught up in grand features or pushing visual quality beyond the point of diminishing returns because you want to feel like you’re AAA, you want respect, you want to compete with Blizzard. However, I’ve always tried to remind myself and the team, we don’t have Blizzard’s budget, we don’t want to have to get tangled up with investors and so, it isn’t realistic to think we can set out to make a game that is the best to the widest audience and competes on all fronts - but we can make something that is the best to a narrower audience, by honing in more on things that audience wants and creating our own unique experience that will be appealing in a differentiated way. Then you have to just hope that audience turns out to be big enough for you to do well and ignore the people who criticize your game, where you recognize they’re just not your target audience and they’re not who you built the game for, so if it isn’t to their taste, that’s fine.