In most of my games (always play with 10 civs, huge map) it seems as though one or two AIs end up with 12 or more cities while most AIs have 3 cities. I'm not talking about late game, this usually happens quite early. So very early in my campaigns, about 80% of the AIs are almost certainly out of the race for a victory.
To deal with run-away AIs (which is a problem in most 4X strategy games), I'm wondering if maybe the unrest penalty from number of cities should be increased from 3 per city to 4 per city. Expanding would still be advantageous, but at least smaller civs could be more competitive in science and production against the AI civs that grow to be double or triple their size.
What do you think? Any other suggestions for controlling run-away AIs and making comebacks by smaller civs more possible?
also: where can I find the file to make this change so that I can test it?
Thanks in advance