The AI improvement is probably the most important thing for this mod.
i´m for one don´t feel realy threatend. I have only played up to emperor, not deity, but i still don´t think it´s going to change much. After getting better civics in the ancient era you can litterly explode. The AI dose not.
With like 30-50% or more of the worlds population. Having 100% on science and still making over a thousend gold a turn with 100´000 gold backup cash the game dosn´t really gice you a challange.
I play with the barbarian world and minor civ checked. And are also changing so the barbarians are as good as civs from the begining. This gives you a challange from the start but when you overcome that then you get to the point as just described.
Of course if the Ai would be better in staging war that would be a difference but i don´t think that is enough.
They have to be better at managing there cities, choosing right tecnologies and building more cities (when appropriate ofcourse).
For example: i´ve noticed that some AI´s build a tremendous amount of healers that just cost alot of money and dosen´t really do anything for them. They should only build them, with medic uppgrade, for keeping there cities healty.
Without getting too deep on this theme, because then this post is gonna be an essey
overall their cities should concentrate on hammers and building buildings that that give hammers first then buildings that are giving food. Ofcourse there have to be some tech building and units up in that mix. When they have some units and all the good building then they should "build science".
With tecnologies they should concentrate on getting tecnologies that really matters, like one religion, then tecs that give better civics.
Hope someone reads this, say what is good or piss on the things that they think is wrong with what i wrote. Just so that something is happening on this subject. Because you can change all the grafics or adding how many new features you whant. Without good AI the mod don´t give the player a challange. And that is sad for a mod that i think is AWESOME!