Age of Wonders III Interview

The turn-based strategy fans over at Matchsticks for my Eyes were able to corner Triumph Studios' Lennart Sas for a quick Q&A about the next installment to the developer's highly respected strategy/RPG series, Age of Wonders III.  Here's a little something to get you started: 
Peter Sahui: First off, congratulations on announcing Age of Wonders III! A lot of people have wished for this news, but very few were expecting it it's been ten years since Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic came out in 2003. Can you tell us about the journey to getting this game into production?

Lennart Sas: Age of Wonders has always been very dear to us, like our first love. During the more than six years when we worked on Overlord, we recharged with fresh ideas for the series. But of course it needs to make business sense as well. The license with our original publisher expired, so the game became fully ours again. We subsequently did a successful re-release of the series on sites like Steam and GoG. The PC games market seems to be booming again, fueled by hard core gamers, digital distribution and a creative indie scene. PC seems really the place where it's happening now, so it's great to be back with Age of Wonders during these times!

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PS: You've announced Age of Wonders III will add a new leader class system, with unit availability depending on the player's choice of class. Could you elaborate on how the class system will work? E.g. will we be able to multi-class, will different classes have completely different units or will they have some units in common, etc.

LS: In AoW3 we introduce unique RPG-inspired classes and specializations. Classes like the Warlord, Theocrat, Rogue and Sorcerer, allow players to craft empires of their own design. As a Warlord you create Spartan civilizations, as a Goblin Theocrat you can build your own holy empire, recruit little goblin crusaders or cute winged goblin angels equipped with flaming weapons, and wage war on your heathen enemies. We want players to develop unique strategies and play styles.