If it was Vanilla MTW2 1.2 that you were disatisfied with, nothing has changed. If not, diplomacy has been improved (you can actually keep an ally, even on very hard), the shield bug fix has helped most units but all but ruined many two handers (which were balanced according to unit performance before the shield bug was fixed), and spears actually work against cavalry now (if they are fixed in place when the cav charge). Pikes still don't work properly.

As far as I know, the new patch does not change the Securom situation. Since Securom is used with a lot of accounting software, and my father is an accountant, I haven't given it much thought, but I understand a lot of people don't like it. It's unfortunate, because Kingdoms is much better in many ways than vanilla, even before the patch fixed so many of the broken features.