Just downloaded and overall I like it.
Blood slaves auto transferring to the lab is nice, even though the removal of tax control makes blood hunting overall more difficult.
Some interesting new blood spells like blood feast, blood fecundity and blood vortex.
Changes to commanders are welcome and I actually will on occasion recruit non mages now.
Changed luck spell is interesting in that it's still useful for casting on chaff units.
Terracotta army is nice because it synergizes well with fire evocations and actually uses fire gems if you have an abundance.
Not sure why there needs to be distill gold, transmute fire, alchemical transmutation and earth gem alchemy. Two would have sufficed imo. Can't even argue that the lesser spells still have a use late game unlike some other low level spells.
Wouldn't personally say the AI has gotten harder. Beating them back quite easily with several small armies of EA Ermor's levies backed by augurs casting body ethereal and haven't lost more than a few units each battle. Actually since they don't have the huge chaff armies anymore, I don't even have to use as many units because fatigue isn't as much of an issue.
Does horror seed actually work now?
It seems like thrones of ascension require a priest level 3 which is kind of annoying for nations without those being recruitable. No, I'd rather not have to move my prophet around everywhere and I might as well kiss my sanity goodbye if I'm playing as an immobile god without a prophet around.