You must play in Iron Rager Man Mode. Its got simple rules, like Iron Man Mode.
No saving or loading unless you have to quit the game.
No diplomacy, you must declare war on every AI you meet, the moment you meet them.
No by-passing hostiles, you must attack any hostile stack you see, the moment you see it.
This is the only kind of game i play right now, because diplo is so screwed up. And whats pathetic is, i crush the AI on a regular basis doing this. Although i gotta admit, it sucks when your sov dies a lot, but since i have an all STR sov and i pretty much ignore mana. Mana is only useful for alchemy spell to convert to gold, so the mana lose on sov death has no real impact at all.