I love these kinds of games, but that scaling thing you mention really puts me off. if you want an easy mode it should be available to you. I dumped the recent Civilzation (PS4) as the easiest mode was a lot harder that in previous Civ's.
Have you tried Darkest Dungeon? that had me growling for a while. Perma-deaths etc.., right up your street.
I love Darkest Dungeon!... yes, the scaling is pretty unfortunate, it would have made a better game if it was possible to just pick and choose the fights that you wanted to get into rather than have the game try to match you.
Have you tried any of the Wasteland games? I keep being tempted to check them out.
I started the second one, but never played the original. But somewhere along the line, I got distracted... It's on my list to look at again!
I see there is a third one now, but given the state of my unplayed backlog, I'm not getting it until I play number 2!