My favorite DRM-rumor was that bad events would occur much more frequently in some pirated versions. I think having your capital be attacked by Intor Vadul, the Ancient Presence, was one of those. This event is no longer in the game, though.
After turn 10, all your areas are getting raided by pirates.
While we are brainstorming, man would it be nice to have more "unleashable monsters" - like the guy that eats dead people and then goes berserk.
In Fall from Heaven (A civ mod) - you could research, well, a portal to hell and summon them into the world, losing your main nation and playing as them (if you so desire) - I can imagine opening the first gate, breaking thrones to release some sort of indi-force, deamon troops that will only fight for one round, mercs that go rogue, a spell that affects enemy commanders and makes them go indi-if in a province with pd < troops & alone...
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Commander-Equipment (limited to 1 / leader) like:
"Weapons of Paris" [The guy that killed archiles] - Weapons of the troops ignore any magical armor
"Winter Clothing" - Winter Movement & 2 Forst resistance
"War Dogs" - Get one free War dog per 25 Size of troops and 1 for the commander
I played a little with the unleashed mechanic but decided not to incorporate it into my main mod. I think Red_Rob did some stuff with it, though.
I do have some roughly scripted mods along those lines on my computer. The most complex of which is a pseudo-Zerg-mod. A random event created a unit which would act like the eater of the dead (ie, be independent), except that it would spawn other units, some of which would attack neighboring provinces, and, if successful, start new colonies where they would spawn more units.
There was also a separate mod creating a rare event which could result in bloodhunters being attacked by
nsfw units. Which could also create more of themselves.
Some of the commander-things you mention are kind of possible, but not exactly the way you suggest. For example, "magic weapons" is a possible buff in dom5, so you can code an item that automatically casts magic weapons on nearby troops at the start of battle, the same way that the iron face casts ironskin. Limiting them one-leader would have to be done by putting them in a limited slot.
