I agree that the design is kind of weird in some ways. Everybody knew it was going to be an infantry/scorpion civ, but the scorp bonuses seem kind of over the top, and the naval bonuses seem excessive. Is this kind of design unexpected? Not really:
But yeah, between the reuse of existing assets (the only two new objects being seen months ago through leaks), minimal new content, and all of the bonuses being either very derivative (I’ve seen literally all of them proposed several times) or very gimmicky (unit aura bonus) or both (more units with a charge attack!), it feels like a slightly above-average mod concept the devs found on Reddit and decided to run with. Then again, I’ve been pretty biased against this project from the start, so it’s unlikely that I’ll be very objective about the design. Tone down the water and possibly scorp bonuses, and it might be fine.