[Ygorl]

1) No, unfortunately. In fact, there's also no way to go back from the pretender design screen to the nation selection screen. You have to accept the pretender, then hit cancel on the *next* screen. Kind of annoying.

2) I don't know if it's different; the AI attacks you if you've got a high ratio of provinces to troops. Humans typically don't buy mobs of crap troops, and are typically pretty good at expanding through indies, so we get attacked a lot. You can somewhat offset this by buying province defense (and PD is both better and easier to get in Dom3), I believe, as I think those troops are counted. So the basic mechanic is unchanged, the details might be (but I bet not), but there seems to be less piling on because of cheaper troops and cheaper PD (and increased difficulty in getting small elite armies early).