Hello,
It occurred to me that the permalink structure appears to affect POSTS, rather than PAGES. This could explain a lot about why chaos breaks out when we change them! What i've been trying to do with /%category%/%post_name%/ would be exactly the same as the page it matches up with. (I use WP as a Marketing platform...)
What's the trick to having nice permalinks, that are, pretty much the same as your pages?
-Alex F.