Did you ever try Somnium AI? Made by the same guy and has similar elements, while being a completely different game. I'm in the same boat as you with almost no games scratching my ZE itch, but AI def did it.
Unfortunately no the AI actually mainly functions through cheating. Though if I want to get my ass whooped I'll just boot up HoMM 5.5 cuz that AI is very good.
I enjoyed these games plus the golf one a lot with family so it's nice to see it still exists, gonna pick this up for shits and hope it's not a god awful game.
So I finally downloaded the salamander build and would like to say that couch co-op worked flawlessly on FCEUmm. Just wanna say thanks for all the effort you've put towards this project!