Most balanced game settings?

[Alneyan]

You should not use Indy 0 when playing against the AI, not even if your life depends on it: you, as a player, can exploit the lack of independents by doing some Call of the Wind, and sending lone commanders to take everything quickly. Take a province, recruit a commander there, attack another province, recruit another commander, send the previous commander on an attack vector... and you can take twenty provinces a turn quickly.

Low independent levels may result in a similar thing happening, as the AI will probably do some overkill, instead of using just the amount of force needed to kill those five barbarians.