A few quick comments:
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First, I think that there are three elements in these set which are generally great expansions to Settlers and which generally help to improve and balance the game. They're the type of thing that I think most players should use most of the time. The first of these are the Catan Event Cards, which still maintain the randomness of Catan, but keep it within bounds, reducing the chance of long runs of good or bad luck.
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The impact of the event cards is a little more significant than this. On the plus side, I like that some of the events reward different activities (like building at harbors) which change up the base game a bit. And the fact that it can give you a theoretically smoother bell curve is nice.
But, the event cards also have potential to frustrate players. It's a subtle but significant effect. There is more to Settlers than
what is rolled,
when it is rolled is also important. If the Robber is positioned on your '8', and if (when using dice) a bunch of 8s are rolled, you can still know that when you clear off the Robber, you're "back to even", in that the probabilities of that hex producing on any given turn are always the same. With the deck, if those 8s come up while your production is blocked, those are dice rolls that are gone, gone, gone, never to return, so watching your production come up while the Robber is in your territory is potentially
much more frustrating if you're using the deck.
I do still think the event deck is a good and fun variant, but it'll never replace the dice for me.
re: the Fishermen, one of the nice features of this variant is that it "opens the game up" a bit. There is more production, and there are more useful spots to build in. For folks who found the 4-player version of the game a little tight, with one player potentially squeezed out too early due to a lack of building options, the slightly richer Fishermen may make the game more appealing.
On the other hand, a lot of people feel the 3-player version of Catan is a little
too open, with not quite enough competition. The Atlantis variant from the Book and from the Atlantis boxed expansion was great for turning the screws on the the 3-player game. The Barbarian Invasion scenario in Traders & Barbarians works similarly to Atlantis, and I would expect would also be good for tightening up the game for 3 players.