First impressions of SAAB:
+ Great graphics. Buildings, units, maps - everything looks great.
+ More expansions.
+ Good new GB.
- Terribly designed and weak units.
- Awful reccuring quests. Truly awful.
- Mars ore synthesizers are a bad joke.
As it stands, without any tweaks to the three very significant minuses I see no reason to advance to SAAB. This is going to be one of the worst ages ever released without big quality of life changes. I don't care how great it looks or that I can get more expansions if playing the game in SAAB is going to significantly worsen my experience. I would ultimately see this as a reason to quit playing if no changes are made. Awful, awful design.
On the plus side, regarding the 'terribly designed and weak units', if SAM units trump SAAB, then:
(A) it sets the stage for later eras trumping both quite wildly, which can reinvigorate AA
(B) fighting SAAB units using SAM in GBG may be like permanently fighting previous-age units
so for GBG focused players, especially those who like to sell goods, I think it's still worth moving up. I just, from the looks of it, won't be building SAAB units, nor worrying about the colony, nor aging up my timeless dojo's, nor aging up or replacing any of my VF buildings (sleigh builders, 15 idols of thalos, endless ships)
On the downside for Inno if nothing is changed:
- Event/Event buildings impact: I haven't had a reason to change out my event buildings for over a year, since the mars goods aren't valuable and I have enough space to put down one of each new event building while keeping my VF ones. I used to do 10+ of each event building. I don't reno things, I delete them, or sometimes store them to ensure I won't need them and then possibly sell or antique dealer them later. Maybe other idiots out there play like me, or maybe they don't. It is a tad embarrassing to admit, but you may want to pander to the huge spenders a bit more. If there's other people like me that I Could speak for, we don't like silly places to spend diamonds that don't give a long term benefit, like buying 10fp for a huge price, we focus on enhancing our city quicker.
Making settlements produce many many more goods per building as has been done, although I think it's done to balance out the CFs long term which is nice, also causes the value of the event buildings being in the same age to go down. We can't trade SAM down to VF other than to gullable people who don't know about the production increase and think that 1:1 offers are a great deal. Luckily with SAM production being messed up SAAB, there'll probably be more trade opportunities.
The only event buildings that will pique my interest will provide either (a) a lot of attacker's defense or (b) units of the PAST age (you've blown the same age units one with these units along with each of: boatloads of supplies (since a lot of buildings miss them, and RQ'ing collections becomes more tedious) along with moderate-to-high coins. If it doesn't meet these marks, I'll view Sentinal Outposts as a more efficient addition.
- Settlements: Why will we bother with settlements given that the worthwhile rewards for a high era are focused on same age units? I'm going to finish my last Japanese settlement before SAAB is on live, then stop going after more dojos. I won't have time to do egypt in time for it to be worth putting the building out, so I've scrapped that already on live. I'm one of those people you love who buy all the expansions right away even if we probably could have done it in time with-out them.
I'm going to enjoy another year of more relaxed events, though.
I'm honestly trying to provide some constructive criticism here. I don't really expect anything to be changed, and I can see the upside of the worsened fighting units for long-term balance, since the damn 20% crit chance on everything randomizes fights so much that you're guaranteeing a lot of diamond heals on two round battles, or forced manual battles. This kind of RNG is where you start to piss off the heavy diamond buyers.