Regarding 3.2: Few here mentioned the useful things it does fix, namely the absurd defections due to religious rebellions.
The AI also manages its armies better in 3.2: They don't just send all of their troops to the colonies, thus leaving their european territories undefended. Spain now has a large army in Spain all the time, and it wasn't the case before
The AI now builds ships and keeps a considerable fleet around. That by itself imakes the patch worth it.
As regards to improving on the 3.2 bta patch:
1)
Blockading: the AI only sends in stacks of 3 or 4 ships with the large fleet not close by. This makes sinking the blockading AI fleets extremely easy. In one cmpaign, the AI had 100 big ships, I had 20, but its large fleet was far away allowing me to sink the 4 ship stacks it sent to blockade without worry. I'd then retreat to a port only for it to send another lonelyy 4 ship stack to blockade.
2. Pirates. It is silly for pirates to appear in my home waters all the way past 1800. Which port do they come from? Historically they needed bases from which to operate, they didn't just appear on the sea. They are easy to sink, and are more of a micromanagament nuisance.
3) Perhaps the AI could be mademore aggressive even on standard settings: The AI nations only very slowlyy occupy most of the African states, although there are benefits to doing so (including large amounts of gold from peace settlemetns, and only a small army is required fot this. Same for India: in most of the games it's left alone, or only a tiny fragment of it is conquered.
4) This was't the case before in 3.1, but noww on many occasions by 1800 Russia is either tiny or doesn't form. All the Siberian territories stay uncolonised, etc. Perhaps even the Golden Horde AI shold get an option to form Russia, as it usually stays the most powerful force in that area(with the change governement decision present in3.2, many times it doesn't break apart
5) During wars, the AI should manage its armies better: on occasions it builds a huge stack, where there isn't need for one and only suffers horrendous losses due to attrition. It also doesn't protect the provinces it has succesfully sieged well enough, allowing the player with a small army to immediately move and resisege, whilst the large AI stack is off to the next province.
6) When playing a European power, te rewards for colonizing far off provinces should be a bit bigger: unless the player forces himself to play historically, the benefits for not doing so and focusing exclusively on conquering neighboring european nations are bigger.