In a game I was playing on challenging in .950, every champ I got to surrender had about 15 leather bracers.  seems the comp might be wasting some cash there.

Wishlist:

essence column in city list.  preferably as for instance 1/2 if I have 1 enchant on a city with 2 essence.

ability to see what grain/materials/essence would be on squares that have other cities too close.  AI doesn't seem to pick the best spots IMO.  I tend to assign value as mats+grain+(essence*essence).  sometimes it's advantageous to raze and pioneer a new city 2 squares away.  as it is I have to save, raze, and check values.

AI needs to take better advantage of high magic worlds.  I prefer playing in them, but I end up with champions with 4-5 enchants each that take cities by themselves.  I don't think the enemy does a lot of unit enchants.  even just Stoneskin + multiple earth shards+ defender starting occupation makes a huge difference in game play.  granted this got better in beta 4 with levels to the shard temples, making it harder to support the large number of enchants.

AI seems a little easily scared by non-military might.  In a challenging game, I had about 5 heroes, and a scattering of defenders in some of my cities.  If the enemy had dove into my empire taking cities, they could have gotten lots of land before I manage to stop them.  at the very least, they should probably me me actually do something after declaring war before I could demand they surrender.

surrender to include enemy territory, not just the sovereign as a champ.  what happened to all the people in their empire?

Priocipine's crown (or something like it) to be craftable.  excessively useful item to start with on sovereign, so maybe it should be reduced to supporting one enchant +1 per 3 sovereign levels or some.  It's the only gear item I ever buy when creating a custom sovereign.