...I was trying to find out weather or not this game was a dead-ender for me(as I value my time) or if the programmers skill matched the strength of their vision. I bought the vision. I've been playing comp games and D&D since the Seventies and like Mulder: "I want to believe". And as such, on the surface, FFH is very compelling to me. BUT...
You ask, Does the AI play to win? No, it doesn't know how to. or if you prefer: A LOT of sizzle! but too little steak.
*Sycophants: please feel free to respond if so compelled...unless.
Your writing from mommies'/parents basement in which case. Well, you can imagine.
Firstly, I'm not writing from my parent's basement. I, too, have been playing computer games since the 70's. Aside from my own "Tic-Tack-Toe" game I wrote in basic, I played many "cassette tape games" including much of the "Temple of Apshai" line. I also played a Star Trek like ASCII game on my college's mainframe system in the 80's. If you know what that is then, we have a common reference point. But, it's all moot, really - There weren't many "games" in the 70's and, what existed, wasn't much like CivIV. The first game that remotely resembled Civ that I played was "Empire", IIRC. "Populous" comes close as well.
Now, to the point:
Is FFH2 perfect? NO! But, it's a mod. It's a very, very, very complex and full-featured modification of CivIV. CivIV was not build to support FFH2 specifically, it was built to support its native game format and some modifications to that. Still, FFH2 has been developed and has progressed in scope far more than many "total conversions" of CivIV. It has more unique features than any CivIV Mod I know of which is, admittedly, not very many.
The point is that FFH2 is very ambitious and takes the CivIV engine by the hair and slings it around like an abused toy. It stretches "what is possible" with the native engine. It pushes the envelope. Considering all that, it's likely to assume there are some complex bits of Civ that don't work well with this total conversion. Nothing is more complex in a game than the way its AI works and this is no different in CivIV. To be blunt, CivIV's native AI simply "doesn't understand" what to do with a great deal of FFH2 brings to the table. Even then, the FFH2 developers have managed to eek out a passable line of approach for the AI to follow.
Is it as good as CivIV's native AI? No, it is not. But, for a fan-developed total conversion mod, it makes an impressive effort at trying to be competitive.
I approach this game differently and I suggest you do the same. I look at FFH2 as more of a "roleplaying" experience. I chose the civ I wish to roleplay and then take up the challenge of making my OWN game interesting and unique. No, the AIs don't do an excellent job. But, they can present a challenge nonetheless. Primarily, it's due to the handicaps they are given to make them a bit more powerful. That's fine. It works, to an extent, at presenting a challenge.
Will the AI ship over a boat full of fireball wielding mages, spewing fireballs everywhere and summoning spectres to destroy my city while their legions storm my beaches? No. But, it will pursue standard, generic means to present me and my civilizations problems. It will attack. It will defend. It will form alliances against me and it will attempt to force me to do what it wants. It will attempt to gain a victory in the ways it "understands" how to do so. But, it does not understand subtleties and, for that matter, neither does the native AI. In order for that to happen, much more than just weight codes have to be introduced. As it is, the weight codes enable the AI in CivIV to "feel" more competitive than the ones in FFH2.
CivIV's AI "ain't so hot" either. It uses many of the same hooks as any other AI - Handicaps to decrease the opponent's costs for certain actions. So, the CivIV AI gets similar bonuses but, with the one caveat being that the AI was written specifically to control the units it was designed to control and to compete for the victory conditions present "out of the box." Its weight codes are custom tailored for its decision engine and the game environment. FFH2 can change the weights and prioritize some things but, we can't expect them to recompile the whole game engine, can we?
You are, of course, free to poo-poo FFH2 all you wish. But, I think you can enjoy the mod if you are willing to treat it differently.
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that should go to that required building into another unit or two. The AI does have trouble keeping some types of high-level units alive, and so may not have full access to units with upgrade requirements, but the latest AI changes have improved the AIs ability to level units successfully. If I were playing at Deity but wanted more of a challenge, then I might turn these requirements off - but I'm not there yet.
