Lennart Sas, Triumph Studios' director, recently told Polygon that Age of Wonders 3 is being developed to appeal to a broad variety of gamers including old-school players.
Aside from the single player mode the game will feature an intriguing multiplayer mode, driven by email. This type of gameplay is designed with those who have only a very limited amount of time to play in mind. Once a player takes his/her turn an email will be sent to the other players in the game, notifying them that it is their go.
"[There are] games going on for sometimes a couple of weeks," Sas revealed. "And play whenever you want – you might have ten games going on. It is old school but [it works] for people who have busy schedules and can't commit to spending two hours a night."
Age of Wonders 3, the first game in the series to be released since 2002, features 150 units, six races and as many as six heroes per army. Gamers will be able to replay battles to determine exactly how their hero died and every square in the game will be fully moddable.
Players will have the option to absorb other cities and forces into their own armies though this can cause discord within the ranks. Alternatively you can choose to level a city, though this will sour the opinion of the race who owned the city towards you or you can choose to grant a city its independence. Heroes meanwhile can be bribed with cities or treaties.
"It is sort of a trade-off," Sas commented. "War is a nasty business and you just have to make the right trade off."
Speaking about the changes that are being made Sas said "The biggest challenges are innovating while not pissing off your core audience. Sometimes you take out a race and replace it with a different race or change the movement of a unit in combat… people will start to complain and mess around in the forums. Hard to please the hardcore."
Sas said the Triumph team are trying to make the game "integrated" and "accesible" commenting that players didn't need a manual to play Civilization V and shouldn't need one for Age of Wonders 3.
Age of Wonders 3 is due to be released on PC this autumn.
