In answering this question for swquinn, the answer raised a more pertinent question that I'd like to hear answers to. I'll post our own strategy (promise I won't accept it as the answer), but I'd like to hear others.

Specifically: how do you go about setting a sensible budget for your content team. Usually one of the very first questions asked in a development is: what's our polygon budget? Of course, these days it's rare that vertex/poly count alone is the limiting factor, instead shader complexity, fill-rate, lighting complexity, all come into play.

What the content team want are some hard numbers / limits to work to such that they have a reasonable expectation that their content, once it actually gets into the engine, will not be too heavy. Given that 'it depends' isn't a particularly useful answer, I'd like to hear a strategy that allows me to give them workable limits without being a) misleading, or b) wrong.