The Guardian of Pristin Pass is the sort of challenge you don't see in many games, and perhaps for good reason – triggering it will almost certainly kill you. Once you know it you can avoid stepping adjacent to it, but it's killed most of us when we started out. Perhaps that's not fair, but it does set the atmosphere. Orthus is similar: once you know what to expect you can handle it, but initially it's perhaps unfair.My first game was with the Khazad. There was a dragon statue called "Guardian of Pristin Pass" right outside my capital, I had no idea what it was about. Then I walked a Warrior scout by it and a few 8 attack Gargoyles spawned, killing my Warrior. I then had a problem settling anywhere as these Gargoyles were patrolling my borders. Seriously, 8 attack, wtf? Between this and getting my city sacked within about 8 turns (before I could train a Warrior) as the Ljosalfar I learned that barbarians were no joke.
You definitely need to play more if that's your view. Granted, some civilisations do play similarly, but the ones you've listed aren't amongst them. I find that Doviello, Grigori, Illians and Malakim at least play very similarly, and rarely play them.Alright, so my main issue with the game: every civilization feels the same. I know this will be an unpopular opinion because I hear people talk about how great this mod is because changing civilizations is like playing a new game. And I'll be honest, I haven't tried even half of the civilizations so I haven't really delved deep into the more unique ones.
For the others you need to get some experience to see how they're special. For the Khazad, don't see them as a 'fast conquest' faction – they're builders with mid-late game potential for warfare. Make sure to use their siege line: Trebuchet, Create Battering Ram and Dwarven Cannon. You can lay waste to enemy cities with siege weapons alone, and defend your cities with the same. That's really only viable as Khazad. Also, if you work with the vault mechanic your production output will become incredible.
In the late game if you need a little more of a special touch to them, you start getting the dwarven Tier 4 troops: Dwarven Shadows and Druids are absolutely incredible.
The Luchuirp are probably stronger than the Khazad, in my view, but it's not that easy to call. The Khazad suffer less war weariness, they have better production and better defences. Also a crucial factor you may be missing: experience. Golems don't get it, and Barnaxus's ability is a poor substitute. The Luchuirp are top of my list of factions I feel invincible playing as… until I realise I haven't done as well as I expected. They look awesome, but sometimes there's no substitute to a high level early Aggressive Axeman who nabbed Orthus's Axe.Compare this to the Luchuirp who get very unique units, the golems. The golems are just way better than what the Khazad have access to, and that's not even including Barnaxus. I'm probably missing something but if anything, the Luchuirp should be the aggressive attacking civ. The Khazad get the vault bonus, but honestly this feels more like a penalty in the early game since you can't research as much early tech without getting penalties while expanding. In my most recent game, this caused me to lose out on founding Runes by a few turns. Honestly the Khazad just feel like a watered down Luchuirp. Again, I'm probably missing something.
This is, to be fair, not immediately obvious. You have to adopt an implicit Hippus strategy, and then you really shine:I got the Hippus when I chose a random civ, and they have sort of the same thing going for them. They're supposed to be the warmongering horselord civilization, but they get the same exact horse units that everyone else gets. What makes them special?
1. Horselord gives +1 movement and +10% withdrawal chance. This might seem like a small deal at the moment, but you need to synergise to make use of the power of these.
2. Get Flanking promotions! I know, that +10% withdrawal chance seems like it's nothing you want. You don't want to lose a fight, right? But +10% means more the higher your base chance is. Hippus Horse Archers can easily get 85% withdrawal, right off the production line. That's a 15% chance of dying in a fight you lose: Kuriotates would have a 25% chance, almost twice as much. And their hero Magnadine can get 100% withdrawal: he doesn't die. A force of realistic level Hippus Horse Archers can ransack the world and almost never die, gaining ridiculous experience in the process.
3. Guild of the Nine isn't optional. The fact they can get Mounted Mercenaries out of instead of infantry ones isn't a nice extra: it's a key part of a good Hippus strategy. Mounted Mercenaries can defend, like Kuriotate Centaurs, and are generally excellent. Hippus should raid their way to riches and buy armies on the fly with Guild of the Nine. Magnadine's ability works with that, allowing you to buy any other troop types you might need.
4. Use their worldspell. This is not a civ you want to neglect the worldspell of: War Cry will win you a war. Possibly several.
5. Make sure you raid if you're playing Tasunke. Then you leverage their extra movement particularly well, as you can use it to raid and you can use enemy roads. This is an excellent economy by itself, plus it stops the enemy's progression.
This isn't your fault, but I think the impression is because you're expecting the civilisations to play differently while you're playing them the same.To be honest, the vanilla Civ4 civs felt a bit more unique because you often got early unique units and buildings which influenced how you played the game. In FFH4 I feel like I'm playing with more or less the same civ every game, because all of the units, buildings, and tech are the same.
You can play Amurites and use Swordsmen and Champions and not understand how they're different. Or you can play them, throw caution to the wind, invest entirely in the arcane tree and win with nothing but Wizards.
You can play Sheaim and use Chariots, or you can rush Rosier the Fallen, try to use Pyre Zombies to prop you up with ultra-aggression while you ramp the AC up with Elegy of the Sheaim, obliterate the world by calling the Four Horsemen really early, stop your research early so you can buy the Meshabber of Dis outright, defend against the Horsemen with absolutely perfectly designed (they resist Horsemen damage types) Tar Demons that appear for free at high AC, and watch every empire in the world collapse, including yours. Win simply because you hold out the longest. (My absolute favourite type of game, and nothing like any other civ.)
It's a testament to FFH's strength that you can play most civilisations in a generic way. The standard tactics are usually open to you. The advanced, unique ones are emergent, and rarely obvious. For instance, it can feel like Svartalfar are at a disadvantage without siege weapons and with their Fireballs being illusory, until the devastating XP-farming Illusionist + Fireball + Assassin method comes to you in a moment of genius.
I personally tweak the map settings to make them quite nice. More resources and whatnot. But games played okay without that. Don't start war too early. This, again, is going to make it impossible for the civilisations to differentiate themselves. If you're doing most of your aggression very early, most civs won't have had chance to get their best tactics up and running. For the most part, FFH encourages you to play an initial phase where you fend off barbarians and build yourself up.A lot of civs in FFH2 are supposed to be played aggressively. The problem is that the map makes conquest really difficult. At the default settings, civilizations start really far apart or are blocked off entirely by mountains. In my most recent Khazad game I couldn't really justify rushing another civ since it was dozens of tiles away. Not only does that make conquest difficult, but I also feared crushing maintenance costs. To make things worse, resources seem really rare so expanding towards another civ can feel awkward. I just never felt the incentive to start war instead of just expanding around my capital with settlers. Maybe I should increase the number of AI civs beyond the default? In my Hippus game I physically couldn't attack anyone, since a dragon city spawned in the valley north of me, and every time I put a unit in its borders it died to an invisible enemy unit.
Some civilisations can play around this: Barbarian types like the Clan certainly can, plus my above Sheaim strategy. You can also force a rush with Aggressive civilisations, but it's not easy.
Acheron (the dragon) is certainly game-changing. You can disable him if you want, but he can be a lot of fun. If he shows up and blocks you in, don't see it as the end of your fun: see it as a new challenge. And the Dragon's Hoard is a useful reward for your troubles. However, I admit that playing Hippus and being penned in is a really bad stroke of luck. Hippus don't like to be in a pen.
Really, the only civ that can't do warfare is the Elohim. I like to play with some mod or other that fixes that, as I feel like all civilisations should be balanced in combat if they choose to go into it.By the way, this is another example of weird unique unit distribution. The Kuriotates don't seem like much of a warring civ. It feels like you're intended to win through massive research or culture, which they're really good at. However it seems like the Centaur Archer is just way superior to other civs' early mounted units, even the Hippus. +1 movement is cool, but I'd take the Centaur Archer over the Horseman any day. Not to mention how good Herne looks.
The Kuriotates's advantage is that their cavalry can defend. It's a great advantage, but I don't think it can compete with Hippus withdrawal + Magnadine + Mounted Mercenaries + leader traits. It's useful for protecting an empire of settlements and far flung super cities, but yep, it's also great on the offence. Still, I'd rather play a long list of civilisations before the Kuriotates if want I want to do is go to war, because the Kuriotates don't really have that many advantages – and don't forget their +20% war weariness!
I hope you continued playing, because FFH has a hell of a lot to offer. I think it's understandable that you're finding it hard to get started, but don't give up. Try Erebus Continents and tweak a few settings if you want – perhaps disable Acheron. Don't feel bad about regenerating your starting position. The other thing I'd suggest is try to go a bit slower and maybe try something themed: one of my first amazing games was trying to play Amurites and really massively rely on magic, and another was when I played Calabim and really focused on getting super-vampires.