Thanks for your post!
I also noticed that in AI only mode (aka hotseat mode) there are a lot of crashes that I didn't suffer at all in normal mode. I think hotseat mode is still pretty buggy, and my supposition is also confimed by CA including fixes for it in the upcoming patch.
You got the point. Larger map and higher movement rates means a lot more calculations by the CPU, but I played with it a lot and I can affirm that allowing higher movement rates helps the AI in an incredible way to elaborate smart moves, there's really no doubts about it (it was the same in RTW btw).
I could lower the armies around at start but you probably will notice that the campaign will be back to an arcade setting which is really unappealling.
For sure once 1.2 patch will be out I'll try to balance the upkeep cost for the AI too to eliminate the creation of huge and irrealistic stacks around, as I know it's a problem.
I also almost finished to expand the starting family trees for all the factions to both make also dinasties more realistic and to allow more named character around, a problem for the AI faction usually. If this modification will work as intended I could happily lower the other troops (the upkeep costs of the family members alone will already mean a lot less money for the AI factions to spend on peasant troops).
All in all I think this mod is for people who prefer to "suffer" a bit more performance wise but enjoys more to play in a historical realistic setting and not in a medieval hollywodesque B-Movie.
I'm not a fan of it for that reason precisely.
Point Blank system was very logic but unfortunately it seems CA wasn't .
So the armor upgrades are still a bit of mistery but we all hope that with the upcoming patch with the fixing of the shield bug and others we could have a definitive word about what those stats really mean.
I also can confirm the intention that units will be recruitable by era, by type of settlement (city or castle), by some specific "buildings" and some also by "zone" (just like the mercenaries). The size of the settlements will just influence how many recruitment slots will be at disposal (which is logic).
It'll be a huge work so it would be done probably in stages.