Taking a look a 1.106. Looks like you are starting to bring back some of the world map strategy stuff, though probably in a very different form.
I'm a little saddened by the "loss" of the blue and green guardian stones. Now guardian stones have very little presence in the game, as AKAIK, nuetral ilari guardian stones no longer seed in the "wild" (and haven't for some time), thus leading to only two guardian stones, the opal one, and the pre-placed nuetral one that the tutorial has.
Maybe this will change some, IDK. But I kind of like the "floating rocky dudes of mystery"*, and given their story importance, it kind of disappointing to not see that very much in the gameplay.
Also, the lack of guardian power stuff without its replacement implemented yet is also going to be rather interesting, especially for players that use it frequently. But as you said, this is only for a few versions. (Maybe this is to make up for those few versions in AI War where the AI didn't have turrets but guardians were not implemented yet
)
*Ok, I know that the Ilari are not the stones, but are rather interacting through the stones, but still that name was too good to pass up.