plague disaster and such destroy provinces over 9 development until about 1200 or 1400. if the ai is consistently spending resources on his capitals then he he experiencing massive destruction and rebuilding it over and over

It is a bit dumb. I swear the chances for drought and plague are significantly lower if even existent for the AI. I can't keep a province above 30 dev for more than a year or two yet they can keep some of theirs at 45.

I think instead of (or in addition to) the constant plague events that seem to screw the player more than the AI, it would be nice if each Era had a dev cap: like you couldn't make any province above 10 dev in the classical age, 15 in the next, 22 in the next and have it ramp up to the 199 or 200 or whatever it normally is for the Information Age.

However I do not know if that is possible.

One way that could work I suppose would be if a province got a modifier that made dev cost +1000% or smth after hitting the dev cap, then have those modifiers leave after each new age