[.86] my thoughts

Pretty much agree with all except #5.

Roads don't care who uses them.  That's why retreating armies have destroyed roads & bridges throughout history.

I share a lot of these same thoughts.

1. Seems to me that the AI is quickly able to spam cities and I am not. Once I clear out the initial "easy" enemies with my Sov and first hero, I get a second level of enemies that I need to create armies to defeat. Until I can defeat these second tier enemies I can't get to a spot where I can colonize another city. I've seen that AI units can sneak by these second tier enemies where if I try to get a pioneer past these guys I almost always get attacked. What eventually ends up happening for me is that I create one or two of my own cities then end up having to get more through conquest, this is when I realize just how many cities the AI has been able to create.

You need to play EFE like you play Gal Civ 2 now.  First, stop making workshops and lumber mills first; instead you need to spam pioneers until you've claimed everything you can.  Second, keep your Sov and first hero in separate stacks so they level faster.  Leveling your Sov gives you prestige and prestige it what makes cities grow faster.  Leveling your first hero to level 4 then taking path of the governor also gives you prestige.  Having lots of cities isn't necessarily a good thing.

2. AI units do not seem to grab loot very often. I often find loot that a wandering monster was obviously guarding after it's been killed by AI. The AI apparently killed these wandering beasts but more often than not leave the loot for me to wander on through and pick up.

This is a known bug to be fixed in the next release.

3. When I'm attacked early on by the AI they usually have upwards of 10-15 units, which is probably why they are attacking me as I at this point usually have only one or two. Thing is, I do not see how the AI can support all these units, especially early on. If I have more than 3 or 4 units early game when I've only got one or two cities my gold is in the red. How is the AI doing it? I did not think they "cheated" on normal difficulty.

As mentioned above, grow your cities quickly with prestige.  The more people you have, the more money you get.  I also beeline for the trading tech right from the start.  Sell all the stuff your heroes are finding.  That really adds up.  If too many AIs are coming at you at once, you can "buy" a non-aggression pact from them although I think this is bugged.  It's supposed to work for 50 turns, but somehow they are able to break it after 1 - 10 turns.

4. When the AI enters my territory and I tell them to bug out, they'll bug out but the very next turn they'll enter my territory again so I have to keep telling them to get out every turn until I get frustrated and give up. When you tell them to leave your territory it should last more than one turn, it's just too much of a hassle to have to tell them every single turn to get out.

Agree.  This should provoke a 10 turn non-aggression pact or something.

5. I do not think that road movement bonuses should apply to an enemy army traveling through enemy territory.

6. Enemy tactical AI needs help. I know this has been touched on but if I have a unit that can dish out ranged damage of any sort, the enemy AI should not sit back and buff itself or spam me with debuffs while I just sit there and damage him from afar.

Agree.  I move.  Enemy casts burning blade.  I hit.  Enemy casts obscuring fog.  I hit.  Enemy casts stoneskin.  I hit.  Enemy is dead.

7. Unrest penalties seem a bit extreme to me, having a 30% unrest hit at a normal tax rate just seems a bit much. This kind of forces me to choose all the unrest reducing city upgrades when my cities level up.

I think the unrest is fine.  It wouldn't matter if it was 20% or 80%.  All the game mechanics are based around it so just get used to dealing with it.

8. Don't know if there are any "rare" city upgrades at city level up but I've never seen any. I always see the same city upgrades, either I'm doing something wrong here or I think there needs to be some additional city upgrades added to the list.

Yeah, SD has a really nice game mechanic here that just needs some more polish.  Cities should have Path of the _____ traits like champions that would help in getting trait choices based on how you want to specialize a particular city.  In addition, the buildings themselves should have more to do with the surrounding resources.  For example, if you choose Path of the Iron City, your upgrade choices should be something like

a. Iron Forge: this city gets +1 iron per iron mine

b. Iron Guild:  this city produces troops with (10% x # of iron mines) less metal requirements

c. Iron Merchant:  weapons and armor purchased/sold here for (10% x # of iron mines) less/more gildar

d. Iron Spell:  spell cast on this city that decreases build times by (10% x # of iron mines)

e. Iron Militia:  full plate armor given to (1 x # of iron mines) militia defending this city

f. Iron Mint:  city produces 2 gildar per iron mine each turn

g. Iron Fist:  troops produced by this city gain +2 strength per iron mine

h. Iron Workshop:  visiting heroes may learn the iron apprentice trait which gives +1 iron production per season and +5 production per materials when stationed in a city

and so on...
 

scifi1950 : I guess what I meant with #5 is that once you are at war with someone you should get penalties on their roads AS IF the enemy is destroying their roads. It's probably too hard to implement but if I was being attacked and on the retreat I would like to have the option of "disabling" my roads so the AI could not use them, then, after the war fix my roads at the cost of some resource, like gildar or something.

Trojasmic : I really like your idea on #8, another idea could be that as your city expands and grows you uncover a hidden "arcane vault" or "ancient library" and something like this could be a rare upgrade to build on to add research/mana/military production.

The only other thing I forgot to mention is that I think there should be some limits placed on the number of cities you can have, more so than what is already in place which I believe is just distance between cities. When I get upwards of 10-15 cities I find it more of a chore to keep track of all of the production, this is why I rarely play on large maps. I could not imagine having to keep track of 30ish cities, not fun in my book.