Best AI leaders

[Kolath]

You could mod in AI Auto Play by jdogg. It's a feature which lets, with a command, the AI take over your civ for X amount of turns.

Do you have the link handy?

 

[Hawe Hawe]

Cardith lorda, without a doubt, followed by elves, and the Balseraphs do fairly well early to mid-game. Grigori does well, too.

I've noticed evil civs have a tough time, because they're almost always annoyed with non-evils. They don't remain at the top score-wise for long, in just about every game. Just one of those many things I undid with tweaking.
Khazad does awfully, because of technological predisposition.

I share your experiences with Khazad and Kuriotates til Midgame. But then changes happen:
Kuriotates has large land areas, causes cultural pressure everywhere but has no army to back up all those colonies.
Khazad in contrast found few cities, but only decent ones. They raze nearly every barbarian city they conquer. But this works good with his dwarven vault productivity. The Khazad always have large und powerful military, are technologically among the best and have a solifd economy. Thats why i see them as a strong civ. On the other hand the Khazad will never really win a game, because they have to remain small to keep their strengths.

In terms of victory conditions there are only two, that the AI is able to acchieve: Altar and Domination
Good AI civs for Altar victory: Bannor, Elohim, sometimes Ljosalfar, maybe Kardith is capable too (I think this condition is not available for evil civs?)
Good AI civs for domination: I have yet only seen Calabim, Khazad, Bannor and Malakim as efficient warmongers and conquerors. That means crushing one or two civs and conquering a whole continent or the biggest part. Even these successful conquest have been far from domination. But thats similar in vanilla too.

 

[salaminizer]

I'm in the middle of a game in Prince. I started as the Hippus but finally managed to play as the Mercurians. I razed Keely and Sheelba, now there's me and Rhoanna, Cardith, Amelanchier and Faeryl/Hyborem. Faeryl boosted research with the Veil, and built almost every wonder available. I think I set the map to Continents - can't remember now - but the thing is, there are a few islands and Cardith got three-men-defended settlements around. There's even one lonely settlement with ZERO units inside.

Amelanchier spawned in a northern continent and just got one city out of there. Faeryl also settled in her island and got one island far away from there.

In my continent there was me (Hippus), Keelyn and Sheelba. Then Hyborem spawned in the middle of the Clan and I built the Mercurian gate. As I was razing Keelyn, Hyborem founded 2 one-land-tile city and another city near Amelanchier.

I dunno if this is regular, but I must say it's quite a funny game and Faeryl doing good is news to me. BTW, I'm not quite a warmonger, when I have the opportunity and my cities have a nice infra-structure (damn Simcity-player) I go to war - incredibly the AI is being VERY peaceful, I was the one that started all the wars yet. Cardith was at war with Faeryl once, and Amelanchier fought for a while. But as I said, this was the most... peaceful and interesting game since a long time

Aaaaaand FYI, I haven't finished ANY game yet in FfH2. Usually I quit by turn 200 or something - the Trophy Hall does miracles.

 

[Grey Fox]

Faeryl and Morgoth does pretty good in most my games. Especially Faeryl. Which is weird since she has 2 useless traits for the AI.

 

[kenken244]

it seems that by finishing a civ makes it do worse with the ai

 

[iamjooish]

I share your experiences with Khazad and Kuriotates til Midgame. But then changes happen:
Kuriotates has large land areas, causes cultural pressure everywhere but has no army to back up all those colonies.
Khazad in contrast found few cities, but only decent ones. They raze nearly every barbarian city they conquer. But this works good with his dwarven vault productivity. The Khazad always have large und powerful military, are technologically among the best and have a solifd economy. Thats why i see them as a strong civ. On the other hand the Khazad will never really win a game, because they have to remain small to keep their strengths.

In terms of victory conditions there are only two, that the AI is able to acchieve: Altar and Domination
Good AI civs for Altar victory: Bannor, Elohim, sometimes Ljosalfar, maybe Kardith is capable too (I think this condition is not available for evil civs?)
Good AI civs for domination: I have yet only seen Calabim, Khazad, Bannor and Malakim as efficient warmongers and conquerors. That means crushing one or two civs and conquering a whole continent or the biggest part. Even these successful conquest have been far from domination. But thats similar in vanilla too.

I haven't bothered to give the AIs a chance to win @ noble difficulty, even on vanilla untweaked FFH.

Doviello came close to stomping me out in one game because I focused on founding religions (meaning more than one!) and having the shrines pop into my capitol. Meaning, I was playing with only one city for about 150ish turns. Then doviello tries to zerg rush me with about 15-20 beastmen. It wasn't pretty...

Another time I got goodie hut techs all the way up to smelting and metal casting just by pure luck, with copper nearby, when Doviello declares war again, all of the sudden... reload autosave from a few turns back, they still declare war, but I have a few pikemen ready this time and place them in harm's way, on hilly terrain. After several more reloads, I figured out how to stop the first bum rush. Battle of Issus, I guess. Try to heal up my 3 pikemen, and an even bigger second wave comes in and wipes them out.... repeatedly, as I try every maneuver I can to stop them.

Those had to be the shortest two games I played seriously... fuunnnnn times all in all!

 

[Bad Player]

I think some of the differences in people's opinions may depend on how they play the game. E.g. in a game with a high civ:land ratio then the Khazad may do much better since everyone has a small empire but in a game with a low civ:land ratio then the Ljosalfar might do very well because they can expand uninterrupted and get a large empire which makes them powerful.

 

[KingOfLands]

I think the Khazad AI is quite good - they rarely make bad decisions, Kandros in particular - but the gold/settlement tie-in hampers them score-wise. Like others have said, they have no trouble with anything they set out to do as far as war, even when they've only half the towns the rest of us have. In one game the Calabim were all but wiped off the map by a skeleton dump from Sailor's Dirge and Orthus, and the Khazad expanded into the void left behind over the next few turns and wound up ahead of everyone but Keelyn.

Warmonger Civs:
The Calabim and Jonas (not Sheelba) and Capria have been the most notable military leaders in my games so far, but Tasunke rarely shows up and I've been playing on noble and prince while I try to fill out the Trophy Hall and figure out some beeline routes and so forth.

Good Civs:
The Luichurip are quickly becoming my least favorite AI civ; they show up much too often in my games, are no fun (or threat) as played by the AI, and have weird diplomatic messages. The Elohim are, as others have noted, pretty good.

Evil Civs:
Under Tebryn the Sheaim tend to do all right on science, but are otherwise sort of mediocre; of the other evil civs only Auric seems to have a particularly strong AI, which I'd suspect of borrowing heavily from Ragnar's (in Warlords) if I knew anything about how one actually sets those up. Faeryl and Keelyn don't do anything embarassing, either.

Side question: Is Auric set to be an atheist or slated for a themed religion in the future? He never seems to convert to anything.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Auric is the only other Agnostic leader. The only god he'll worship isn't currently alive.

 

[Grey Fox]

He doesn't have the Agnostic trait (anymore?) but he still doesn't adopt a religion.

I've checked the XML after having a discussion about it cause the Civilopedia doesn't mark him as Agnostic.

 

[Sureshot]

he definitely used to have it, i checked an older version and found his traits as this in the xml:

<Traits>
<Trait>
<TraitType>TRAIT_AGNOSTIC</TraitType>
<bTrait>1</bTrait>
</Trait>
<Trait>
<TraitType>TRAIT_MAGIC_RESISTANT</TraitType>
<bTrait>1</bTrait>
</Trait>
<Trait>
<TraitType>TRAIT_PHILOSOPHICAL</TraitType>
<bTrait>1</bTrait>
</Trait>
</Traits>

 

[MagisterCultuum]

In the Current version he doesn't have it, but he sure did in .21 and earlier. The personalty civLeaderheadInfos file contains AI weights for each religion, so with his very negative weights towards all of them he wouldn't adopt one anyway. The current one hurts the AI (since he won't convert but doesn't get the lower chance of religion spread), but is good for human players.

I wonder if the Traits absence is related to the possibility of adding a Mulcarn religion (probably in Ice), which is the only one he would adopt. Of course, it was probably just an oversight.

If the trait is only for Cassiel now, it should really be named Deist, since the angel is definately not undecided on the existence of and proper role of gods (both his peers and The One). Auric's trait, of course, should really be called Autotheistic.

 

[KingOfLands]

In the Current version he doesn't have it, but he sure did in .21 and earlier. The personalty civLeaderheadInfos file contains AI weights for each religion, so with his very negative weights towards all of them he wouldn't adopt one anyway. The current one hurts the AI (since he won't convert but doesn't get the lower chance of religion spread), but is good for human players.

I wonder if the Traits absence is related to the possibility of adding a Mulcarn religion (probably in Ice), which is the only one he would adopt. Of course, it was probably just an oversight.

If the trait is only for Cassiel now, it should really be named Deist, since the angel is definately not undecided on the existence of and proper role of gods (both his peers and The One). Auric's trait, of course, should really be called Autotheistic.

Apothetic?

Everything about Auric is pretty entertaining from my standpoint; I'm sorry he's not playable (though I understand Sureshot's mod-mod enables him and will no doubt try it eventually). If I had the faintest clue where to start in terms of modding I'd see if I could give him a civic, religion, or a latitude-dependent wonder of some kind (which should be possible given how the Space Elevator works, I'd guess).

 

[Rex rgis of Ter]

I find Tansuke does well in the begining. He always attacks other civs, often eliminating them. Once everyone startes getting magic and religion, they start to lag behind though. He sucks on Archipelago too. I find the Malakim are powerful to. In my fractal games, They always take their entire continent, and have a strong military. Oddly enough, the Sidar always do well. In my game, they conquered Luchurip and the hippus, and took the entire continent.