Looks great as always. Can't wait to see if the AI really is actually smart. :P A little concerned classic difficulty will be pretty brutal for regular people, even while explorer mode might be a little too easy for those people. Will probably be rectified with Tactician mode when classic mode can be toned down slightly and tactician mode made more difficult than existing classic mode. Though honestly probably should be 4 or even 5 difficulty modes (not including an iron man mode), just to make sure there's a difficulty for everyone.
Initial impressions:
-A bit confused about making surfaces except smoke and fire permanent. Does this mean they'll stick around even after combat? I feel like this is counterproductive to the whole surface insanity problem, particularly with electric fields. IMO, they should disappear faster than already. Glad poison doesn't contaminate water anymore though.
Perseverance sounds cool. Curious about the percentage of armor regained and what a control statuses counts as (hard cc like, knockdown, stun, charm, etc?)
Yay durability gone (mostly). Yay second civ point right away. Yay companion class choice. Yay weapon swooshes.
