From what we have been able to ferret out, there is no real relevance to the timing of this patch release. It had always been planned for release once it was finished and it has been in the works for over two years.
The full patch notes are available on Steam, and from what we can tell, it might be worth pulling the game off the shelf and blowing the dust off it. Looks like a number of improvements and fixes have been made to the game, which could make it worth playing again for RTS fans of the game.