Some reviews - like one from 2011 - say the AI is totally broken, game is unplayable.

Other reviews - like an earlier one in 2010 - say the AI has been fixed.

With so many conflicting reviews, which is right?

There's also a mention of a DOS version with working AI - how odes that compare on things like graphic quality? How well does it run on Win 7 or 8?

The AI of the windows version is broken - even in the HD version recently released on Steam. The AI will only use the pre-placed units, but does not produce new ones.

The DOS version seems to have a working AI und should work on modern systems by using dosbox , too - but complains are there that it runs very slow.

Yepp agree with that, Win Version is broken(general feature is broken too as its basically the AI doin the job for you^^)

If you have issues with slow dosbox stuff, try pushing the cycles to around 10-12k using ctrl+F12 this should do the trick.

I think I have just found pretty good configuration values in dosboxE2140 file for CPU section:

core=normal
cputype=auto
cycles=auto

Try it and tell me what you think.

Does the game come with DOSBox already set up? Or would I have to do that myself?

yes it is, no worries on this side, the game is already configured.

Alright. Thank you.