.86 is a huge improvement over .85.
That said, I noticed the AI spams a ton of units at you- often of marginal quality. It's almost farming for XP. Reminded me of GalCiv II some.
i dunno what game you played but in my game this wasnt even remotely true
ai sent to me very good army it basically prevent my attacks for a long time since i could really abandon the cities with my champions until i researched the good stuff (and created them ofc)
all parties were balanced and there were always champions (not so good tbh)
since the game lasted too long in the end his sovereign was very strong, nearly as strong as mine and he was basically unkillable for anyone by my sovereign (unless ofc taken with a larger army)
when i started to capture the first towns i had huge problems since i couldnt really defend, i had to split all my champions to try and defend all cities but wasnt really possible since not all champions were good at that