Is AI bonus too small?

[UWHabs]

My issue with rubber bands is that I think should be steam rolling some Civs, just not all of them. I want to have AI fall behind so I can go beat them up. The catch is that I also want some Civs to keep up with me, and those Civs and I can then fight for global domination. And I also sometimes want to be the Civ that’s fallen behind, and now I’m struggling to catch-up or looking at victory conditions that don’t require superior tech.

I almost feel that what they should do is on some levels, give some AI all the deity bonuses and more, and give other AI none of the bonuses. Like, if you ran a continents game where you were fighting tooth and nail to secure your continent, only to look at the other continent and see a runaway AI who has taken over that entire landmass.

But overall, I don't play deity because it's just so demoralizing to finally get your 2nd city settled, only to see the closest AI already has 4 cities, they're almost done wiping out a city-state, and now they have 6 warriors and 4 archers moving towards your capital. Count me as someone else who would much rather they get more bonuses over time, even if at times it's completely blatant cheating (like let them build a district in one turn every now and then, or they can purchase tiles for free to build districts or wonders).

 

[Leucarum]

Maybe they should just allow more granularity in the AI's bonuses. Rather than picking one of a few difficulty levels allow you to adjust AI combat modifiers, starting units/settlers, diplomatic modifiers etc... and let players customise their difficulty.

 

[japanesesamurai]

The scaling difficulty is not an option as far as I know. There's a mod for this, and those games are extremely easy on whichever difficulty. They just cant catch up, unless perhaps you give them units and buildings and free districts and free techs/civics each era instead of gold and modifiers