See AI section in patch notes.

Yea, a lot of it is "behind the scenes" updates. What I'm not seeing so far is:

"A lot of new interactions with players to explain why they feel the way they do."

"More interaction with the player about what the AI is doing about others."

Was the monster AI tweaked in 1.5 or was that 1.4. I can't remember, but the world map is a lot more dangerous now. I never liked how the AI would not attack unless you stayed in attack range for 2 turns. Some areas are actually closed off until you have an army now. 

I believe you should be seeing more of the dialogs that pop up when you hit the turn button, saying things like (not an actual example, obviously):

"Curses! We hate you for your fishmongering ways!"

...vs. just random drops in relations vs. the other factions with no obvious explanation.

Also, Monsters are still hanging around AI cities without attacking.

Mid game, and I'm at war with the an AI. I approach one of the AI cities and there are half a dozen different monsters hanging around the city doing nothing.

By mid game one of two things should have occurred:

-The monters attack, destroying the city, or

-The monters attack, but are defeated...so by mid game there are no monsters surrounding the city.

Although, the monsters do seem more aggressive in chasing me. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it allows me to level up faster.

Yeah, and roads are dangerous as hell now. Never know when just outside the fog of war a dragon is setting on the road ready to eat your face. 

Stay off the road!

If this is the diplomacy patch, is it possible to have a "Make peace with $NAME" diplomacy option? I'd like a way to keep some factions alive or at least a way to stop total war to make the diplomatic victory possible. Sort of the reverse declare war on faction option that already exists. Also, a button for "match trade imbalance with gold". 

Stuff that'd be more difficult:
The ability add outposts and settlements to the trade screen would also be nice, to allow trading territory for peace.
Or being able to give/sell units (or just their equipment) to an other faction, for if I don't want to get directly involved in a war between two factions.

Yes to both of these.  And can we trade resources and treaties on one screen with access to any means of persuasion?  Why can't i trade knowledge for peace or a technology treaty?

ooooooo what did you do and how did you do it?

N/A

Who is your daddy, and what does he do?

Since this is the Diplomacy update I may as well bring up a idea I had a long time ago.  Right now Alliance victory may as well not exist. It's basically conquest where you don't quite kill everyone, but usually still kill most people. I would like to suggest that it could be tweaked a bit in order to make it an interesting alternative way to play.

Change it so you don't need to ally with every other player to win. Instead simply require your alliance to control most the cities or have most of the faction power or something. This would mean that you wouldn't have to wipe out that one AI that refuses to be your friend, instead they just become the North Korea of Elemental and get ignored. Secondly, require a unique Wonder to fulfill the victory condition, called say the Sovereign's Council. This is mostly to prevent you from winning by accident. Thirdly, allow the AI to win this way. If an Alliance of AIs dominate enough, and maybe get the wonder if it exists, then the player should lose the game.

I know this is unlikely to make it in because some of it would be a fair bit of work but even adding the first part would be enough to make alliance victories much more meaningful and unique, and thus make diplomacy much more useful and intriguing.

I like this idea.

Code changes.  I checked out your clever chasm trick.  But at the end of the day I resorted to two big changes:

1. Put the bosses back on a leash, so they can't wander off if they see something nice and tempting wandering by their borders.

2. Made their lairs indestructible (more like ground props).  Because sometimes the AI will run in and clear the lair while the boss is wandering around which gets rid of his wander radius and sends him out to explore the world.

I don't know if its a perfect solution.  But I ran a bunch of test games and they always left their wildland before the above were adopted and I never caught an incident of them wandering off with the above changes.

The opt-in beta has been updated to include this change.  Let me know how it works for you.