On higher levels the AI hardly ever gets attacked by monsters, and that's a fine cheat.

I disagree. The AI already get's plenty of bonus cheats to it's stats. It shouldn't get immunity from dragon attacks as well.

It's not a cheat. It's a different set of rules, and follows on the point you made: on higher levels. You want to take on a greater challenge, you're handicapped. You want to take on less challenge, you handicap your opponent. Different levels of difficulty: different challenges. What I think we need to see, however, is a list of changes that occur at each difficulty level above and below the standard. This hasn't been offered. For reasons that have never been stated.

As to dragons not attacking a unit on the next square, that's part of the monster AI. It's set to roam, attack, return to lair, etc, seemingly at random. Been a lot of discussion about this. Many posters don't like it, and many do.

"XCOM cheating accuracy rage syndrome"

Jesus.

Thats the reason I cant play this game until someone fixes it. Also teleporting aliens.

Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. That soldiers in XCOM are actually more likely to die to a single shot than to shots over time gives the feeling of randomness over skill even though it's no less strategically/tactically valid. There we're managing the odds; you can minimize the chances of casualties but nothing you do can ever eliminate the chance of a soldier getting killed. It's our faulty expectations of zero casualties that makes it feel wrong. I know it yet I still can't 100% get over it and still feel wronged when one of my soldiers dies, but ultimately a person dying from getting shot once is something I accept.

In Fallen Enchantress insta gibbed cities is just wrong. I know how to manage things so that my cities are rarely exposed to the risk but the mere fact that a roaming monster can instantly delete one of my cities as though it never existed in no way leaves me happy or understanding. The stakes are large enough that I think many of us will be annoyed by significant randomness in any event but coupled with the immersion breaking implementation of instantaneous city deletion it's just too much.

It's also not valid for FE imo because while I can manage monster behavior the AI clearly cannot. It will settle near a lair and then do nothing about it. Eventually the lair is removed and the monster begins roaming and the AI is just oblivious. Late in my games it seems I always discover somewhere in AI territory at least one city with a grid of roads around it. This is the obvious tell tale remnant of a city being settled, then razed, a new city settled adjacent, then razed, and repeated over and over till the monster finally kills itself on the AI units or it wanders into my territory.

I think the easiest solution is to make monsters invariably destroy cities within a certain range of their lair and never leave that area. The AI then faces a simpler scenario: it can't settle till it is able to clear the monster and has done so. Lairs should not be lootable until the monster is dead as well.

It depends on how much effort you put into your soldier or city in question.

Cities, you have to put effort into, and therefore 1 shotting cities to random encounters feels wrong/terrible, especially when there is little you can do. You cannot have your Sovereign stand guard in all your cities all the time, and even if you did he wouldn't have levelled and would be defenseless against Dragons and whatever else comes roaming.

I for the same reason didn't like random deaths to my soldiers due to the random crit through superior cover halfway across the map, because I spend a lot of time and effort to get these soldiers levelled, and 30 minutes of playtime caring and nurturing a squad of soldiers destroyed in a single random rolls just wrecks the mood and feeling of the gameflow.

In turn, if the Soldiers were named "Soldier 1", "Soldier 2", "Soldier 3" and so on, and had no progress whatsoever, I would happily throw them at the fire.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I think the easiest solution is to make monsters invariably destroy cities within a certain range of their lair and never leave that area. The AI then faces a simpler scenario: it can't settle till it is able to clear the monster and has done so. Lairs should not be lootable until the monster is dead as well.

An even simpler solution than my first suggestion is just making monsters unable to raze cities (just damage them or take x turns to raze them?). This solution would probably be easier to implement but I think the AI would still suffer the same inherent disadvantage. Either way the AI needs to be more proactive with monster lairs.

I like these ideas! 

If it were possible, I would prefer smarter AI play... "favored" or "perked" (ie cheating) AI is only the next best thing

The AI is such a sucker you should be taking advantage of it rather than the opposite