A couple of things which I really hoped would be different/don't like:
1. You still don't get an account of how many casualties you suffered and or caused when you take over a castle. I had assumed this would be changed in Dom II - it seems like such an obvious hole. A message to the effect that I captured/didn't capture a castle isn't that helpful; a regular battle report would be much much more helpful
2. Only one pretender for each nation at a time. You can do the same thing with a pen and paper, but it's really tedious to have to redesign a pretender every time you switch between themes. [my example here is Ulm vanilla, for which I tend to field a master alchemist rainbow mage, vs. 'Iron Faith' Ulm, wherein I use a much more magically strong pretender, to get good bless bonuses.]
3. Light background for troops - makes it hard to see which is which in the recruitment screen, and makes them have a kinda blotchy outline. Aesthetic turn-off and functional irritation. ughh!
Those are my 3 main problems. The AI doesn't appear on my list because there's a lot of talk about that elsewhere, and it may be it's a lot due to independant strength setting. What do people think? Do you agree with these points, or do you have other things that you think really need to be changed?