It doesn't need to feel like old Emperor. It's a different concept. The goal is to forget that AI is being boosted. Suppose you are playing with other human players of your same skill. If you are behind not for strictly bad RNG reasons or your civ uniques, then AI is over handed.
You still need to play to your best, because AI will improve a lot later.
I agree. My only concern with the current AI handicap formula is that the AI is too weak in the early game at a difficulty level where the challenge feels comfortable in the middle and late game, and that this gap increases the more you lower the difficulty. On Deity the AI starts off very challenging and then ramps up a bit as the game goes on, but turning the difficulty down to Emperor (from the perspective of someone comfortable at playing at Emperor) makes the early game feel way too easy, especially compared to how much more powerful the AI becomes later in the game when its handicap bonuses increase. And to be more specific, by "too easy" I mean that the AI seems to be trailing too much in technology, economics, and infrastructure.
As an example, in my most recent game as Germany (a Civ with no special bonuses until you can start consistently gaining CS allies) I started on a continent with Songhai, Carthage, and Portugal. Songhai and I went Authority and Carthage and Portugal went Progress and all of use were doing pretty well at expanding out and settling our lands. There were wars, and Songhai managed an early capture of Lisbon thanks to their special Horseman UU, but I quickly noticed that I was taking the lead in culture and science despite not really having any special bonuses (I only had 2 CS allies and a few more Friends in Classical). This lead got worse and worse even though I was only in defensive wars (although I did capture Carthage's Holy City as it ended up not being their capital and it was adjacent to my borders. Such luck!). By the time I got to Medieval Songhai hadn't even researched Writing, even though they were the strongest AI Civ on the continent. I figured once I got the ability to cross deep ocean and discover the other Civs on the opposing continent that there would be an overpowering Civ beating me in Techs or Policies. By the time I got Caravels and Explorers and discovered all the other Civs I found out that not only was I the tech leader, but I was leading by almost 10 techs! I'm not particularly skilled at this game, so for Emperor that felt like a really unusual lead, combined with the fact that I was playing as Germany. But sure enough once I got Hansa built in all my cities and got the Statecraft policy tree up and running so I could start allying all nearby CSs my slight lead turned into a tremendous one. In the end I was only ever leading in policies by 1-2, but I was a full Era and a half ahead of even the 2nd place Civ (America, it turned out). I reached Renaissance while most of the world was at the end of Classical, and I reached Industrial before a single other Civ could reach Renaissance. And I went Authority > Statecraft > Industry with a religion focused on Gold and Production (Synagogues, Tithes, Thrift, and Council of Elders), so it didn't make sense that the AI was having such a hard time keeping up science-wise. I did manage to spread my religion to my entire continent, so Council of Elders + Tithes was giving me some juicy yields, especially once I started spreading it to the oceanic CSs once Astronomy was researched. But that is still only 200-400 science per city converted, enough to chip a couple of turns off a Tech at Epic speed but nothing overwhelming. Frankly, the production yields from Council of Elders was the most obvious boon, and I was able to time my missionary conversions with Wonder production to grab some key Wonders as soon as they were available. As the AI reached the Renaissance I could really see them speeding up in science and culture production, plus they were all sending spies to Berlin to steal my techs (as they should). It just felt like too little, too late at the point, though. If I had actually focused on Science, or had a Civ with UA/UB focused on Science, how much further ahead in Techs would I have been?
I know, n=1 and all, but I still feel that the AI should be given a little more of a boost in the early game, at least for difficulties of Emperor and below.
EDIT: I guess I should mention that I started on a Sugar monopoly using Communitas, so all of my Sugar was on marshes, meaning I couldn't improve them til Machinery. The only culture-producing luxuries nearby was Perfume, but that was Songhai's territory so when I forward settled him for some Perfume he of course went to war. I only fought defensively and took only a single one of his cities, although I did later Liberate Lisbon in order to gain Maria I as an ally. Also, since my Sugar couldn't be improved for literal ages, I lucked out and got Purity as a Pantheon, so I could at least get good yields from the Sugar marsh hexes until I could improve them much later. BTW Purity is AWESOME with the right start and the Lake yields really did need the nerf that they got. The point, though, is that I did not have any natural sources of science or culture from luxuries, just food and gold (Sugar marshes w/ Purity) and production (scattered Marble, Silver, and Copper, but not enough for a monopoly), and yet I was still absolutely killing it with my Tech lead. Culturally I was only 1-2 policies ahead.
