Well, there's seasons now (36 turns with one overarching effect, impact on resource harvesting and usage, and 5 of the various weathers to chose from per season). And there's research, so you can hide in your village and grind even more. Balance has improved a lot (witches are still a bit OP, but they're no longer "lol faceroll", and no longer trivial to stockpile). There's a lot more events, but it seems like the different islands having different biomes, and different biomes having different events does e.g make village events a bit repetitive since you're gonna run through the same set over and over and over.
It IS a bit grindy, but I'm also risk-averse so I tend to play cautiously, which doesn't help (see every game of Dominions we ever played together). The highest-tier mats being crafted and taking large amounts of lower-tier mats (e.g. 70 T1 wood->1 T4 crystal wood, 70 T2 elven/dark/dryad wood->7 crystal wood, 70 T3 ancient wood->11 crystal wood) does add to the grind, as does the lack of a pressing sense of urgency. You can sit back and take 800 turns to get anything done if you can stand the tedium.
Overall, I'd say it's steadily improving, but there's a ways to go yet.