At the moment, the AI blitzes through to the Ancient Era basically as soon as they hit their first star, at least on Humankind difficulty.  This creates two problems- first, not every settled society emerged in human history at the same time and, of course, by doing so they limit their own ability to access the massive snowball you can get from a longer Neolithic Era by virtue of all of the food and influence you can get from mammoth hunts.  The AI already has personalities and behaviors that influence the cultures they lean towards, so I propose that the game embrace this and have certain personalities intentionally aim for 2 or even 3 stars in the Neolithic.  This would allow those nations to be a lot more aggressive during the Ancient Era, perfect for warmongers.  It would also play a little better as a human player if you are playing with 10 competitors, as you're way less likely to get completely shut out of the majority of cultures due to rolling a bad start on the map.


Thank you for coming to my TED talk.