I know this may sound counter, and possibly presumptive.

But as it relates to them pushing these out until Beta 3.
I'm going to posit a belief, and though it may be wrong. My guess.. they are specifically, not bringing in things that could because of the technical issues, cause people to have incorrect impressions from the current upcoming beta.
That's not to say that problems could just compound and this whole game gets put out till Feb. But they seem to be feeling very confident when it comes to the state of the game. And here's the other thing to consider. The folks working on this stuff are specialists in what they do.
What am I talking about? Well I would point out in several interviews with Brad, he's mentioned, that they had book publishers, provide people so they could work on the actual background and mythology and naming structures of things. What does that mean? I would say it indicates, he utilized specialists who deal with something in their field. Fantasy backgrounds.
So, knowing that, if they are leaving certain aspects out until later beta's which since they've got several coming along.
I would present it as such.

They feel confident in the strength of the Workshop that it either only needs the extra time between now and then, that they are happy with it's pace, and it hasn't presented any problems. And thus would not alter the release date.

This one here, indicates they either have the last little bits to finish up, polish etcetera, or that two weeks will be enough according to the time line. So they won't be present for us to test. As they are not forseen as significant issues.
Sovereign editing, will be in 2-B. Faction Editing 2-C. Empires, Tech, Spells, till 3. and so on. What seems like a large number of delayed staggered presentations, is actually a carefully created, and crafted control system. For example, you can bet that at some point, Brad, was working hard on the AI. Even though this time he didn't talk about it, as he was presenting us with this information.
My guess.. when it's all added together and we hear the game is going Gold. That will have meant, a major crunch period, but because they truly felt it was ready.
Especially since they spent so long in the previous beta, making the significant changes that they found do the help of all the previous beta-testers! (You go all you sexy people, and the non-sexy ones too!)
We'll all fall upon the parts like ravenous locusts. And they'll provide fixes as we find problems.
And then we'll all be looking at this screen live, in the wild..

Where some of us will have different games going on their different computers.. like one epic length one on the desktop, and one a little faster and smaller on the laptop.
and it won't all be in our heads..