I actually think that .915 has fixed a lot of the difficulty problems that surfaced in the last two patches. Whereas before I had to play on Beginner to even hope of making it to the end game, I've already won a game as Altar on easy, and am doing fairly well with Kraxis on the same difficulty level. I'm thinking of actually giving Normal a go again; Easy AI were kind of a pushover for me =P Mind you, I was one of the first people to complain about the game being too difficult when that was the case. What difficulty level are you playing at?
Again, this is a "for what its worth" comment. I am only into my first game in v0.915. I played three games in v0.914, and graduated, from "Beginner" to "Easy". My v0.915 game is at the Easy level, partly because I anticipated that (as you said) some of the difficulty problems would be fixed in v0.915. Maybe they have been -- can't really tell, as yet. I was still getting kicked pretty hard at the beginning, but ultimately do expect to win (Gilden, small map, 3 AI's). However, finding the *FUN* is still an issue for me.
We all differ in what we find to be *FUN*. Some folks want Serious Challenge ( I respect that! ), and others do not.
I remain hopeful that Stardock will succeed in meeting pretty much ALL of our styles of play, and ideas of *FUN* . For one thing, I am heartened, that now the range of play is: Novice, Beginner, Easy, Normal, Challenging, Hard, Expert, Ridiculous, and Insane. In other words, there are NOW 5 levels above medium and 3 below. I welcome this!
As far as that goes, if Stardock wants to offer another even harder level ( let's call it "Suicidal-Masochistic" 
), I would have no problem with that. I just want to be confident that Stardock will try to make a game that is *FUN* for all (or at least, most) of us. That way they will end up with the best sales, and the Biggest Hit; and then they will be incentivized to create MORE great games for us ! 
