One of the things I like about Orbis is the difficulty during the early game, with the many, many animals and demons threats during the early game. I miss that when playing original FFH.

However, the AI seems to have trouble effectively dealing with it. I just played the first 160 turns on a Highlands map, on Monarch, and at that point I had four cities, but of the six AIs, only the Hippus had settled a second city. Everyone else was stuck with only the capitol city. The AI needs help.

Is it not escorting its settlers with enough units? Not building enough hunters? Something else? Would some Turinturambar-style AI help changes during the early game address this issue?

I think the AI must acknowledge the presence of animals and build stacks of hunter to escort settlers.

If there's a lot of animals around tracking is a must. Archers are efficient too to soften them up for your hunter to finish them. If the AI would make stacks of 2 archers 2 hunters for each settlers he would stand a much better chance I think. The AI should not just turtle up and set his tech path to some tech that is useless short-term. It should go for archery and tracking asap if there's animals around.

I've seen it build settlers and keep them in the capital forever. I guess it is waiting for some miracle that never happens.

I wonder if the hack that limits the AI to 1 scout isn't doing more bad than good here.