I really like how active the AI is in the strategy phase here compared to DW7E. They can create their own factions, leave or betray the player (without needing the player to go out of his way to be evil), befriend the player by their own initiative, actually attack multiple points of the same kingdom at once and officers in the player's kingdom seem to be active much more often than in DW7E. I think it's only missing npc -> npc succession without involving conquest or rebellion.
It's kind of a shame that in other aspects it lost things from DW7E though, like the smaller amount of cutscenes and unique battle quotes. They should just have kept the same cutscenes and added more on top, if they weren't able to remake as many as there were before. The AI in combat also seems less aggressive, especially for the common soldiers. In DW7E you could get troops of soldiers basically rushing towards the player, and being in the middle of them could be rather dangerous if you weren't using some kind of area attack. Here, it seems pretty much the same as in DW8XL, but with less soldiers on the field.