"mod" pretenders/nations set to AI after start ?

[Sombre]

Hmm. Well I know that the AI fudges resources, possibly research etc at higher levels,.. but I'm not sure in what way it does this, nor do I know the exact amounts.

One thing you could do to boost the AI is make a mod which changes the properties of the scales. For example you could give a much greater effect to the Order scale and then put all the AIs to order 3, while players are limited to order 1, or not using the order scale at all.

I can tell you that I'm 99% sure there's no way to alter or add stuff to the instrinsic AI bonus,.. at least using the normal modding tools. What I'd do is simply give the AI better starting sites with resource and gold boosts - you can, I believe, change these as you go along, increasing the power of the AI if you want it to stay in the game, or weakening it if it's drowning everyone with armies of crud.