Having just played through a game on Empire, I noticed that by the late Classical/Medieval Era I pretty much snowballed ahead of all the other AIs for the rest of the game. However, Civilization/Humankind difficulty is quite challenging in the Neolithic/Ancient era. 

So, what about a mod like schwarzpol's Smoother Difficulty 2.0? The idea is the game starts off a little gentler on the starting bonuses, but ramps up difficult by era to make the mid-late game more challenging. Would anyone else want something like that?

Good Idea!

Yeah sounds awesome!