here's a fair challenge for deity players (difficulty, balance)

[mistral_]

I have a little bit more of 250 hours on this game already and I've finally found the right combo of settings/mod which give me between 50/66% chance of winning the game, as I feel like the final difficulty of a 4x should be.

If you're like me I would recommand you to try the shorter ages setting (if you plan to do a 2 or 3 era game), it let us veterans just enough time to set up and achieve one main objective for each era (or fail to do so) but not enough for the snowball to start.
If you still manage to win every game by abusing the best combos of civ and leaders you might want to consider Smayo's AI Memento Parity mod wich is brutal in this setup and will make you want to go back to immortal , as it gives a good scaling to the AIs in their respective strengths.

 

[Morgawr]

IMO the new 'standard' starting position setting since last patch has made the biggest impact on difficulty. Finally I've had games where I was boxed in with no room to expand and 2 AI neighbors denounce and take me out.

Have you tried the RHQ AI mod? It does improve the AI although I cannot compare it vs. vanilla anymore, as I've been playing with the mod the whole time

I play w/ memento parity mod yes w/o using any myself.. just throw the AI a few extra points, they matter more in Antiquity !

There's also a 'beyond deity' diff mod - next tier 'God' gives you -3 vs IP in addition to making everything everything harsher. I have not tried that yet, hoping the AI improves with the patches so I stick to deity..

I am enjoying myself trying out every leader at least once, also kind of randomly picking my Antiquity civs, not to get powerful combos