Civilization 7 will debut a new 'Ages' system that should lead to a more curated gameplay experience each game. We spoke to Creative Director Ed Beach about how different it makes things.
I'd just settle for competent AI at any difficulty. I only ever had a few runs in Civ6 because the AI consistently fell apart in late game. Conversely, it's why I had over 1000 hours in Civ5. Yes, it cheated, but once I started to ignore that, it was really satisfying to climb the difficulty ladder and still feel challenged even into the late eras most of the time.