Thanks for taking the time to produce such nice write-ups.
I agree on the usefulness of the creative trait. With theaters and colosseums, you've got 2.5 times the lux slider power of CivIII. I've found in my SG's that people haven't really gotten a feel for how many extra citizens this makes available if you take care to grow out your cities to the expanded happy limits. Health tends to be my limiting factor more so than happiness.
If you want to have some fun with culture battles, play the Holy Roman Empire in the 1000AD scenario (great all-around scenario, BTW - England, Mali, Mongols, Aztecs, India all play entirely differently). Just flipped Paris in my current game.
Also agree on the importance of AI warring to game difficulty. My first loss (first game that was really even close) came playing Monty on Emperor pre-1.52. I played too timidly and not a shot was fired the entire game. Mansa built Apollo in the 1660's and launched in the 1840's.
Guess if you're the aggressive civ, its up to you to stir things up.
Might make it more realistic and improve game play to require actual war-fighting to learn some of the military techs.