I, for once am excited. I didn't buy Overwatch since I was deeply disappointed in Blizzard, after D3. Then the whole pandering to CCP and Blitzchung fiasco happened and that cemented my decision.
I didn't play Valor ant since I don't enjoy having a Chinese kernel level spyware on my PC.
So this may be something that can satisfy my itch.
About the city-builder early game experience - you pretty much nailed my feelings about the game.
I think the weakness of the game is that one needs to experience other strategy games (I played very little of city builders, but a lot of grand strategies and 4X) and have some level of self reflection or meta thinking to be immediately attracted to this concept (without trying out the game first).
Most people who didn't notice that micromanaging already won late game is the bad, tedious part, would be reluctant to accept the inevitable destruction of their cities.
I think that there's an untapped potential in increased complexity of the central City. What I mean is that if there was some metagame city building it would attract a bit more players.
It's a pretty fun rougelike rougelite city builder in a world where it always rains and every few decades a malevolent eldritch storm destroys most of the civilization.
They probably forgot to slap a season pass and lootboxes on it. Bet half of the team is hard at work putting in annoying mechanics that can be skipped by money and carving out content for DLCs.