New trees look good, I think I'll probably spend a crapton of points in stealth and become an assassin.
Speaking of which, will we be able to do that (in the long run, I mean)? It's cool being commander of a huge army, but what if you just feel like playing the role of the hired blade? Will the politics include people who want each other dead and are willing to get it done in an underhanded way?
And off of that, how is a character's reputation going to work? Will rumors spread when people notice certain actions? Would it be possible to have no-one know a thing about you provided you left no witnesses alive? Because in DF, you kill someone, the entire race knows through some kind of psychic aether and they get pissy with you. I hope it doesn't end up like that.
Yes, absolutely; nothing forces you to engage with the high-level strategy aspects. I want to make sure if you aren't involved in politics, there will be a lot of 'trickle-down' engagement; assassination contracts, recruitment into armies, desires to open up trade routes to new locations, etc. An inspiration for this technique are the "City State Quests" in Civ V, except much more complex; civilizations will make it clear they are recruiting forces for a crusade, or disseminate through hidden channels they want someone killed, or will put out policy that makes it clear they want a trade link with another civ, and if *you* are the one to do this, the rewards should be great. This will be split into three categories - "Missions" are things given explicitly to you; "Desires" are things a civilization, group, bandit camp, whatever, would like done, but they don't mind who does it; and "Rumours" are general things like "You have heard artifact X is somewhere around Y", or "You have heard the King of Z may be nearing death", or whatever.
I'm not yet sure. If you kill someone without anyone seeing, it will certainly remain unknown. If someone views, they will carry that information back to civilization unless they killed, I think.