Is variety essential to immersion?

This is (now) supposed to be a cinematic game.  Does it feel cinematic?  Should it feel cinematic?  I think the encounter system is converging on feeling nicely suspenseful, which is almost the same thing.  The enemy pawn is creeping closer to the city, the ambiguous character might switch teams, the extra might bail out of the challenge entirely, someone might blow up the bridge -- there are lots of things that can happen (eh, maybe too many) with each card resolution card flip.  But are the encounters differentiated in a meaningful way?  If they all feel suspenseful, is it the same kind of suspense in each encounter, and if so, is that ok, or should you really feel differently when experiencing a brawl in a seedy dive in Nepal as opposed to a frantic rescue attempt in a bustling Cairo market?

One of the weak points all along has been that we have these action categories (luck, wits, fight, escape) that don't have any gameplay differences.  All along we've settled mostly for connecting these to city types, such that each city type has two challenge categories.  I've tried to differentiate the city types further by making triangles more "difficult" than pentagons are more difficult than circles.  But I'm not sure that makes sense in the new version where your destination is chosen for you each turn -- there's no need to motivate a risk/reward location selection decision if you don't select your location!  Still they could feel different if, say, triangles yield more clues but also tend to deal out more damage, whereas circles are safer but not as productive.  This could influence your investment in a given location, coupled with the relative stage of the game and how much info you possess vs. how much you need.

But is it important, then, that, say, pentagons feature luck and wits challenges, or can every city have every kind of challenge?  I don't think it makes that much difference either way, so I'm inclined to take the latter approach, for the simple reason that otherwise, it's something you have to tell the players but it really makes no impact on their decisions.

So you have cities that feel a bit different and in each you face a random challenge category.  The encounter card tells you about the scene you face, and the resolution cards, with their story-board flavor, will help sell the theming a bit.  But I also wonder if we shouldn't add in some kind of differentiation between the challenge categories to make them feel different as well.  I can see two ways of approaching this.

One, and probably the better of the two, is to impose a single rule on each challenge category.  It's simple, so it can be printed on the encounter card or the mat.  Perhaps these are so unobtrusive that it's an optional rule, in the form of a single info card, that you either use or leave out entirely.  But I tend to frown on optional rules like this generally.

Anyway, what could these simple rules be?  I don't know, but something like:

Fight:

- Only one side will view solution cards after the encounter

- Only one cube can occupy a space on the success track

Escape

- The challenge only lasts for 3 resolution cards instead of 4

- No player may bid more than 3 time in the investment stage

Luck

- When investing, adventure cards are chosen at random; any that is 'luck' is worth an investment of 4

Wits

- Pick investment cards secretly and simultaneously -- if you match another player's, you each get +1 investment

A second approach would be to harness the fact that each category has a dedicated set of resolution cards, and each encounter has a custom success track, and make these work together. 

So, for example, "escape" encounters could have on their success track several "stop" points, and the cube can't progress past this unless an "escape" icon shows up on the resolution card or someone pays an escape icon.

"Fight" encounters could have two tracks with a choke point, and only the first team to reach the choke point gets to progress past it.

"Wits" encounters could have a mini-maze:  spaces could blip you back and forth but symbols on the resolution cards would let you punch through the maze.

I think I like the first approach better because it means encounters are all basically the same with each having a single rules tweak.  In the second approach, really each category is a separate mini-game system.  That's potentially fun but it's maybe more complexity than the game needs.