As you discovered, a reference field is a nice way to enable a search or lookup on a long list, but you are constrained by the display value (in your case the CI name).
A choice list is fine if you want to set a specific value or use a list from another table, but it can get very long (and nobody likes scrolling past about 20 items.)
It sounds like what you need is a lookup table that you can reference. You will need to populate and maintain the values in this table based off the active CIs. That means an initial script to put values in and a business rule to maintain them each time there is a record change on the CI, you update the lookup table value. Then you can use a reference field to your lookup table.
By using a table, YOU set the display value (to be host) and you can also reference the original CI record so you can dot-walk to whatever values you need to get any remaining data.
That would be my suggestion. It's a bit of work so make sure whomever is asking for this requirement understands the implementation and maintenance costs. This is another thing that will require testing as you do upgrades - prepare them and let them make the choice if it is worth it or not.
