Ah yes - seeing mention of the difficulties reminds me, are they now functioning correctly again? And is the hard battle setting still just a bunch of bonuses to the AI's troops combat power? Probably too early to tell, but worth asking ...

:crosses her fingers and really hopes that the harder battle settings are closer to MTW's with less stat boosting and more on the extra tactics front, but is not hopeful: I despise stat boosts in battle as a form of difficulty enhancer.