Maybe not THAT weird a choice at all for an update. For starters, one of the biggest complaints I’ve ever had about the game is that cities and castles can feel so “generic” with the block graphics. That gets mitigated a great deal by the new update. With the last two updates, I feel like this game has far more personality than it once did.
BUT…what’s also important is that the new stuff serves valuable gameplay functions. Gardens add tremendously to happiness–especially if you build them adjacent to one another, and especially if you build them on irrigated land. That gets super important when you’ve got to start upping your tax rate for Viking incursions and overall defense spending. Makes the peasants forget how heavily you’re dunning them.
Fountains are cool too, like super-wells. They keep you from having to take up valuable real estate inside city walls by having to build lots of wells. They also provide a bigger happiness boost, I think, than wells/fresh water access does.
This has become a tremendous game now with the updates, maybe one of the best non-contemporary “themed” citybuilders on Steam.