Well, I'm through with the game

[quantum_mechani]

jscott said:

Its not as though you have to make a very hard call on who is going to use death 3 scales. Only 1-2 nations can get by with it!

This is not really true for MP. And as far SP goes, it could improve the AI in a lot ways, to lock it's pretender choices, but it would also make them much more boring. If you truly feel strongly about it you could always start them as human players and set them AI on the first turn. As has been said though, the easy fix for most of the problem is simply to up the world supply level.