I would say it also have to have something to do with the lair said creature originates from, the closer you are to the lair, the bigger the "lust" the monster have for some city-dweller blood.
This would also put the monsters attacking cities algorithm a little into the players hand, if he doesn't want to be attacked, he should clear out all lairs in the immediate vicinity.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

With regards to the road building, I'm not wild about the look when you have a single road piece alongside a longer road.  I'd love to see a 'dirt track' style of road used for those little side roads, which I tend to use so that I can move units to guard a resource without using up all their movement.

The AI has been quite a bit better with regards to expanding.  On a Epic Challenging 1v1 Large game recently I had just four cities by the time I met my opponent, he had eighteen.  On Epic Normal I'm more evenly matched until my military rating sweeps past the AI's.  I don't know if it's just that I'm not willing to go to war until I have an advantage, but when I do fight the AI at that difficulty it has a lot of trouble replacing its lost units.

There's still that annoying bug with heroes appearing in more than one city when the fall in battle but the rank and file guys win the city assault anyway.  I only mention it because I hate reloading just because the AI took out the hero first (smart thing to do) and triggered the bug.

I don't know how it was before - I only started actually playing with 1.20 (expert/expert)

I feel the AI does not explore enough, does not spam enough cities, and is not aggressive / assertive enough

Also the fact that mnsters seem to sleep most of the time gives a static feel to the game

Just because it's brought up multiple times in this thread...  The roads are annoying as is.  Random pre-built roads plus your cities random connecting.  

Click on city, click build, click build road.  Then specify the destination and make it cheap.  Done.  We have clear forest...  And I can't even think of a use for that.  Why not build road?

Here's my problem with aggressive monsters: there's too many ways to get completely boxed in due to a random map.  My last game: One strong monster sitting on my expansion fertile area plus one wildlands blocking the rest of my path.  I had nowhere to build.  There's no point in even playing such a game from that point.  If the strong guys stayed away from my starting area, maybe.  

This may seem a bit contrary, but I find that monsters become less of an issue with higher monster densities than lesser densities.

This is as you have a greater weaker number of monsters to farm for equipment, summoning items, and experience. I haven't noticed much difference in likelihood of getting "boxed" in by monsters with varying monster densities. With a greater number of weak/medium monsters there is a greater likelihood that I'll be able to kill the monsters boxing me in at least.

This style of play also helps the game thematically, in that it feels like you are bringing order to a chaotic world.

This also makes it obvious when monsters avoid attacking CPU cities/troops, and are acting more or less as sentries for the CPU. This may be a byproduct of me playing higher difficulties however.

What I have noticed since v1.2:

Good:

-AI is much better at army construction. In 1.2 I have seen full stacks sent my way, with good balance between archers and melee units. This alone has made wars with the AI far more interesting. 

-AI puts its champions into stacks far more often, killing lone champions used to be commonplace, now it is rare

-AI seems much more ready for war when it attacks now, after war declaration AI attacks with competence within 5-10 turns. 

-(SIDE NOTE) Love the new strategic environment of pioneers costing population

-AI defends it cities very competently now, taking an enemy city usually requires your best army.  This is a huge improvement to the game experience.

Bad:

-AI still makes no use of mages, even when it has the crystal. Archers AND mages would make it very hard to steamroll, and force you to change army design during wars.

-AI still could build its stacks more efficiently. Doesn't makes sense to send out a partially full stack when your intent is direct combat. 

-AI doesn't entirely understand population cost for pioneers. It still spams them to settle and get resources, which is very effective LONG TERM, but I find it gets in fights with me before that strategy has really paid off. 

-AI rarely puts more than 1 champion in an army, seems incapable of making a "stack of death."

-AI never seems to build bows better than shortbows for its troops. Considering how good it is at building company strength archers, this alone holds it back significantly. 

-AI seems to favor high-level repeatable civilization research over maxing out the warfare tree. This might actually be smarter, but I rarely ever see plate mail on their melee troops in the field - that would make them even deadlier.   

-AI doesn't realize Pull Of The Earth is useless on mounted units (but otherwise makes good use of the spell)

Despite my negatives (just have lots of input), I am enjoying the improvement. The game has gotten significantly better over these updates, thank you. 

On roads:

If you play as Mancers, their pioneers build roads, and road building is a trait you can give to any customized unit for no labor cost.

The AI in 1.2 is better at an overall strategic attack plan.   In my most recent game the AI kept attacking at cities on one side of my empire.    As I shifted troops to counter those attacks it launched a major attack on the other side of my empire from which I had just moved my troops!    It was a real surprise and worked great - they rolled up that part of my empire.

The AI is also better at moving heavily damaged troops out of the front line in tactical battles.

The AI is putting together better combinations of troops (mix of magic, bow, and melee).

By the way, this is all great to read - think I'll be picking up FE again since I'm getting bored with borderlands2 (already have 250+ hrs with FE).

The game seems harder in a much more balanced and fair way. My Heroes/Champs get killed much more often in fights in the wild or against AI Nations. So I was in a war against an AI nation, they holed up in there capital, 1st time I attacked I got beat. Tried again as I wanted to see if it was my choices or just the talent of our armies. I beat them barely the 2nd time and soundly the 3rd since it was the 1st big battle. Go on to destroy them, the other nation then declares war on me and marches a much higher tech army on my capital, I scroll back only to lose to them. So I reload and come back earlier to see if I am ready for them say 10 turns in advance will it make a difference.  They actually move towards my capital and see I have more units there, they then in FOW move toward another less defended city and force me to move away from my cap or lose my 2nd most important city. It would have been a much closer battle in my city since I prepared more. Anyways long story ended: AI looks better to me and I am looking forward to many more turns to what I feel is a good game.(Upgraded from decent)

Excellent post, fully agree. A lot of improvements, especially defending cities and creating better stacks. Biggest problem still is that the ai sends out small 'fodder' my strategically placed big stacks easily mop up when they come close.

I've only just gotten this game last week and thus cannot really comment about what has changed since the previous version.

The AI pretty much totally outexpanded me on Challenging. Yet I can hold my last city quite well and I killed multiple of their Champions several times.
I could catch several isolated units as well as one champion twice wandering around without protection.

Their 2 attempts for directly finishing off my main-city were:

1. A champion with 3 relatively good units.
2. Their Souvereign, 2 champions and 2 relatively good units.

I'm not sure if they couldn't just have brought more units or if 5 was their cap.

My impression is that they form full stacks for attacking cities but for stuff like conquering Outposts or when walking around in their territory, they often do not properly assess the risk of losing them.
In their own territory they should see the enemy troops and try to avoid them with single units/champions.

For enemy-territory it's not so easy to tell. If someone runs around with many very small squads just going for outposts, it would be pretty inefficient to always take a whole army to recapture them. I guess my experience is not big enough to really say what is the best approach here.

Overall the AI definately is pretty fine, as at least up till now I'm not yet coming close to beating it on, what I suppose is the highest fair level.

Only thing I would ask here is "How Many COMPLETE games have you played of 1.20?" All too often players run to the forums and complain after playing 1 or 2 games. If you've played 100 total complete games and have found the above to be OFTEN then yes you should come to the forums and let them know. If you've only played a handful of games then no, because every game is going to be different and if the AI played the SAME in every game then it would become boring.

Willie-

Frogboy asked soon enough after 1.2 was released that 100 games was just not possible. No one here is complaining - we were ASKED if we noticed a difference, and I tried to give good details. I have no doubt that frogboy realizes my perspective is limited - he sees it from the code side, and is just trying to get a sense of what we as players are noticing of his changes.

Could my impressions constitute poor representations of the average game experience? I am sure frogboy has seen that phenomenon before. I and others post our impressions, he sifts through these posts for the useful stuff. 

Everyone's perspective is limited, very few have both time and patience to play hundreds of games, so you are of course and without doubt excused, I for one is happy to see your opinion!

To be honest, a forum and its members should never be used as the sole impressions that a developer should have, because its not all types of players who wants to be on a forum, you rarely get a friendly reception here if you don't have the same opinion as someone else.

I hope you will be encouraged to write your own opinion next time too Davrovana!

Sincerely
~ Kongdej