Late Game AI

Late Game AI changes the bonuses the AI gets per difficulty to achieve a more player-like game progression. It does this by adding stat/yield modifiers that scale with game/player era and difficulty.
The AI will be very able to compete in the later stages of the game and will actually be able to win games, mainly by culture/science. Thus the difficulties Prince to Deity will be much harder.

Now also adds two extra difficulties above Deity (Pro and Insane) and options to turn off AI bonus starting units.

For people like me who think it’s sad that the AI just falls off a cliff later into the game and just want them to scale a bit better, but also for people who are looking for a challenge after getting bored of unmodded Deity.

1. This mod was designed for use in combination with Infixo’s "Real Strategy" mod. It also works fine without it or with other mods like AI+, but the AI will be a lot worse at getting a culture victory, will generally win quite a bit slower and will also be worse at defending their cities.

2. Although I have nerfed the AI’s early game a bit, the buffs I gave to their military and their mid/late game make the difficulties a lot harder. Think of the new difficulties as about one difficulty higher than unmodded.

3. Insane, the highest difficulty, has extra modifiers to make it almost impossibly hard (AI wins around turn 170 standard speed). I made it just for fun if you want to play something really broken or gang up on the AI with friends.

4. Be careful of mods that can affect the AI. Some modded civs might also be too strong.

Even though I am confident that I have a difficulty for everyone, a big point of this mod was to create the hardest difficulties yet seen that don’t entirely focus on early game bullying.
Prince and King are both suited for inexperienced players and for casual play.
Emperor will require a decent gameplan but should still allow messing around, while Immortal and Deity will be challenging.
Pro is for REALLY good players and Insane is designed to be impossible for most game setups (I thought it could be fun to have an impossibly hard AI to team up in multiplayer against or in case you want to play a really broken strategy/civ).

If you are just looking for an AI that has a better late game, I recommend playing on King, Emperor or Immortal.

I’ve also removed the difficulties below Prince to make it obvious that they are not supported by this mod.

Late Game AI includes extensive changes and additions to all AI stat scalings in an effort to diversify AI Strengths (for example nerfing many early stats like (wonder) production and gold but buffing other areas like food and amenities). So even though the mod’s name is Late Game AI (because the late game is the main selling point in my opinion), I have also made several changes to rebalance the early game and cover up general weaknesses the AI has (e.g. religious unit discounts and reduced unit maintenance).
The AI also gets buffs to increase their military prowess by giving them strategic resources (optional), reducing unit upgrade costs and generally higher production/gold. No more warrior corps.

The AI scaling was designed to simulate player progress: Lower science/culture/production in the early/mid game, but really gets going later on.

The only change to the human player I have made is buffing player tourism depending on difficulty to compensate for the high culture output of the AI.

There are options to turn off all AI bonus starting units and to turn off AI bonus starting combat units only. Turning off AI bonus combat starting units is the default and recommended option because I think it’s the most fun this way.
When all AI bonus starting units are disabled, many AI starting bonus yields are increased. That increase will slowly be reduced to normal over time; default values are reached at medieval era and the overall difficulty should be the same.

I have posted the full list of changes in a discussion in the discussions tab here on this mod page.

This mod has been tested extensively for standard speed, Ancient era start and Gathering Storm. Other game speeds and starts should also be fine though. This mod currently does not work for vanilla and R&F.

I made this mod by merging and tweaking many other mods with a similar idea and by adding my own ideas later.
People whose mods/code I used: lornard/Gabriel, JNR, RushSecond, schwarzpol, Kaige Lindberg, MyopicCat, Fuzzle
Special Thanks to Fuzzle for letting me use his icons from Deity++.