Oh well it's a stupid move on their part if they implement that stupid rule like AOW did. If you notice there's no AOW III.
That has nothing to do with why there's no AoW_III. The AoW series was financially successful, overall high game ratings by gamers and a long term active forum community for each release, but the developers decided to pursue an RPG compatible with consoles called Overlord.
While Overlord was financially successful it's community forum soon became deadly silent. Unlike the AoW community which is still alive and actively working on a second unofficial patch.
When the developers of AoW were asked why not developing AoW_III the response was they wanted to try something different and they felt no more could be done with AoW. We can't argue with the first half, but the second half was either BS or a lack of vision.