[Edi]

Gandalf, I do not think it would be too difficult to get things working if it were done in the manner I suggested. Allow creation of pretenders with too many points and make those usable by AI only. Random selection from precreated AI pretenders for the nations would solve that.

It'd give the AI the point boost and decently designed pretenders to start with while placing it on the map randomly so there would be no beforehand knowledge of its location the way there is if you must manually turn a nation AI. It would require some tweaks to the UI and some more options for the Game Tools, namely Game Tools - Create Pretender - Fork
Fork 1: Human controlled - Era - Nation - <design pretender & save it>
Fork 2: AI controlled - AI level - Era - Nation - <design & save>

Then have in game creation when adding nations a checkbox "Use pretender from premade list" where it randomly draws a pretender from the list appropriate for that AI level and nation if checked and randomly creates one (like now) if left unchecked.

I'm no programmer, but it'd be nice to hear a programmer's point of view on this.

Edi