Interim AI difficulty for SP Tournament

I would like to suggest an interim step in the Single Player game difficulty. How difficult would be to create AI setting between Normal and Hard which has the "values" (exp and gold returns etc) being averaged. Have it so that the player holds down the Shift key, and the Hard button would change to "Challenge". At the moment I finding Hard unwinnable. (still trying to refine my Sedna strategy). I feel that it would extend the life of the game by providing an additional "work-through".