I think your best bet is to crank up the difficulty and keep playing it until you find it suiting yourself.

I would play the campaign and see if you can win it.

Dearmad, the reason we don't do that is because much of our AI tweaking has to do with make sure the game is fun and challenging.  That's gotta be our top priority.  And in a game like this, tons of other things can make a bigger difference.

Let me give you an example:

Play as a Republican in economic prosperity, global peace, and internal happiness and it can be much tougher than when there's a war or internal unrest.