I can see the ai reacting badly to such a thing. Such as tones of ai captain led armies being abandoned in the middle of nowhere by the main army, or huge ai stacks forming in a city and no governor ever arriving to move them somewhere useful. I just don’t see the ai being able to handle this.

Rebels will be a nightmare for a large empire to deal with. Sending a general all the way across Italy to kill a unit of rebel Rorii sounds ridiculous. Not to mention generals wont be used as governors since they will be so busy moving armies around, lets not forget that large empires tend to have around 1 general per 2 provinces anyway.