Hopefully, alongside the fixes for these bugs 1.1 will also introduce a more competent AI.

I only have a few hours a night, maybe, to play a game.  So once I realized my large map over a few days was shot, I just played a quick one session Tiny map.  It was still fun, but I will probably wait until it is fixed so I don't get sick of playing the same types of maps all the time.  Unplayable, not entirely, but I do understand your frustration.

In the modding area there's a copy of my own build you can try which has a lot of these fixes in.

As for "competent" AI, if you find 1.02's AI "incompetent" then you're probably out of luck and should just turn up the difficulty level.  I plan to have significant improvements in the AI for v1.1 but it's not going to satisfy anyone who finds the existing AI that bad.

I have not seen a detailed description of the bug, but are you sure it's not just using "Rush"? Edit: never mind, I found the description.

Note that I have seen AI Sovereign's have negative gold (which I think is a bug, since I have not seen any banking options).

I must say the AI surprised me in my last game. I had a horrible start but was making a comeback. I had all but defeated one faction that had declared war on me, and I was starting to feel confident. However, a second faction hit me where it hurt with a big stack and followed up with its Sovereign’s killer stack. Faction 2’s troops were better than mine, and its offensive was effective.

I don’t doubt one of our resident experts could have gotten out of it, but it was more than I could handle.

The AI is not incompetent, it just is not as good as I wish it were.  I do not expect it to ever be, but I fully expect it to be getting gradually better.

But I stand by my assertion that it was giving me more trouble earlier. 

Nowadays I see the AI go for very aggressive expansion strategies in the beginning,  but by definition, these are also quite risky.  And I do not play nice.  When I see someone aggressively expanding and leaving a ton of cities undefended, do you think that I let them peacefully develop those cities?

I think that eventually we will see AIs that actually takes what the player is doing into account. An AI that spams pioneers when it feels safe, but start rushing troops when it see the player take a strong stack in its direction.

It has some worthwhile capabilities, but, for example, I have seen Karavox stand in a firestorm for turn after turn, taking damage each turn. This was on insane -- he had 70+ initiative and 700+ (base) health, and he was just standing there, casting destiny's gift turn after turn while roasting to death.

My impression is that if you fight it on its terms it does a decent job? But magic so often seems outside of its comprehension.

Right there with you. AI on normal and challenging has actually outsmarted me from time to time, slipping armies through areas that I thought were defended and grabbing cities I thought were safe. It even pulled this off once by staging a very effecting diversion elsewhere. Every time it managed it because I made a mistake or wasn't paying enough attention, but it was smart enough in every case to take advantage of that.

What it doesn't seem to do well - something I remember GalCiv's AI had trouble with too - is react to changing circumstances, even when it brings about the change itself. For example, in one recent game I declared was on Altar to help my ally Magnar. Relias' forces kept conquered Magnar cities, while I rolled up behind them and conquered both these same cities and Altar's own undefended settlements - I took a good four or five cities over several seasons before Altar's priorities shifted. In another game, my sort-of-ally Yithril suddenly declared war on me and could have grabbed several of my best cities with stacks of juggernauts he had all over my territory (ostensibly on their way to fight the much weaker Pariden), but instead carried on fighting his other wars and trying to conquer the wildlands - giving me the few extra turns I needed to muster a defence and hammer his armies with strategic spells, the only ready defence I had against juggernauts.

It has also seemingly lost some abilities it had in Beta, like casting city curses, unless I've been very lucky in my recent wars.

On topic: I play in lots of small sessions and while I have noticed the bug, it hasn't been game-breaking for me yet.

The Autofinishing of buildings doesn't really bother me anymore, because that just means that when I capture the city I won't have to build them myself. The AI "cheating" does me a favor in that regard. If they happen to autofinish a Juggernaut though... I guess more XP for my main stack?