Making the game harder for myself

[hilton]

How can I make the game more difficult for myself when playing AI (which is 100% of the time)?

Currently most of my games look like the attached graphs. Start off slow, behind most or all other factions, defend, build, outpace them all, railroad over them, then a long, slow period of game being overpowered and just working on wiping out the enemy or accomplishing another victory condition. Eventually my power rating is so high that all the other players graphs look like they were flat the entire game.

All of these games are on the highest difficulty. I've tried enabling various rules to make the game harder, various map sizes, not building wonders so I don't have their benefits (and have to fight against their benefits), etc.


Any suggestions?

[BFG]

The only thing I can suggest is to try playing a scenario where there are only one or two AI opponents.  Frankly, the AI weakens itself by fighting against itself constantly.  If you are its only opponent, it has a much better chance of posing a challenge.

[Buster's Uncle]

Several of the modders a few years ago had a good time with what we called "monsters" - deliberately very overpowered custom factions.  A number of the games related in the AARs subforum are v. multiple monsters; you might want to check that out...

[Nexii]

I found that my flat unit cost modding helped some, since the AI likes to build units that have high ability costs
Similarly, increasing cost of air chassis compared to sea/land (the AI underbuilds air)
Add ecodamage that matters (the AI has reduced ecodamages)
Reduce the FOP a bit for advanced terraforming (AI doesn't really make condensor/borehole)
Reduce crawler power
No save/loading (iron man) style adds a lot, esp vs native life you will get sacked more
Reduce planetpearls

These help somewhat but the AI will still get noticeably weaker as the game goes on.  All you can sort of do is nerf down the powerful strategies that the AI doesn't know how to exploit.

[MilesBeyond]

Blind Research and Iron Man options both help to make the game more difficult. I also do a self-imposed thing where I just don't use Supply Crawlers, and try to avoid things like Boreholes. Makes the game a bit more challenging.