I think it's rushed partly because anniversary event is one of your best chances to start prep for it. So they want you to see it before it ends - and spend spend spend
Summary of changes to existing levels.
+ You will now reliably get 1 selection kit of each type per week if you complete the first 4 difficulties. If you want to build up a bunch of terrace farms, sacred sky watches, and gates or faces in a new city, it's reliable now.
+ You will get more FP per week, and units in level 4 instead of many of the undesirable prizes from previous
- Fountains of Youth and their shrink kit will each take ~16 weeks on average to complete one.
- Diamonds per week are about halved. They all come from level 4 now.
New level:
- You will need a lot of stats for your defending army to "fully fight" GE5, in any age.
- You will need a lot of goods to "fully negotiate" GE5 (if you spend 10 diamonds for an extra turn rather than give up and restart ~10-15k a week spread evenly between current and previous age goods).
- It will take 4+ weeks running the whole thing to complete any of the new prizes from GE5. Temple will be done in 4 such weeks. Others will probably need to wait 5 because you'll miss out on fragments by winning a portrait
- You will have nothing but fragments and portraits to show for the first 3 weeks. That's all the prizes in GE5 are.
- Fortifications are a trap for negotiation - costing more goods than they save. They're fine for extending your fighting a *little* at the cost of less goods than it would to negotiate - but you already need quite a bit of defending army stats for that to work.
+ The Forgotten Temple is a new incredibly powerful build-around for people who get their FP from city collection. And an incredibly efficient attack building. You can maintain one consistently if you do GE5 every week.
+ The Feathered Serpent Statue is a new best in slot building for attack bonuses. You'll average 1 fully levelled every 12 weeks once you've gotten the portraits out of the way.