My chief concern is that this is the most board-game-esque video-game I've played in a long time. Everything at the strategic layer is simplified down to the point of being a series of mini-games that only provide the illusion of depth. I could very easily see myself with an actual map and ship game board, placing markers on countries, laying room cards, drawing dark event cards, etc. And that might be a cool board game, but my PC can do SO MUCH MORE.

Perhaps I'm asking for the wrong thing. If I look at it as a turn-based tactical combat "simulator" that just happens to have a few off-map strategic features to fill in the gaps and provide some flavor, it's amazing. Everything is well done up to the issues you raise, which I agree with... esp. the way wounds are handled, which fundamentally changes the way I approach the game tactically.

But if I assume the strategic elements should be given equal weight, it falls apart quickly. It SEEMS at first glance like there's a lot going on, but everything is shallow. Base building is just a lot of animated menu hopping over what is really just a simple series of tradeoffy what-next decisions. The world map is just graphical eye-candy over what is essentially a mission menu, with a choose-your-next-bonus feature tossed in to make it feel like you're doing something. Most of the complexity of the strategic layer boils down to "Here's more cool stuff than you can afford... choose the order to unlock it all in", and they just wrap that up with a lot of cosmetics to make it seem engaging.

I'm not actually trying to say it's wrong... I think it's more a matter of play-style and expectation. I wouldn't normally buy a pure tactics game, so I place an unusually high weight on the strategic side, which for me is unfulfilling in a very AAA-ishly cliched way.

I would love a genre-mixing of XCOMish tactics with some deeper 4Xish slements of world-building and simulation.