Warcraft 2 in DOSBox won't fight back

[dosrepur]

windows 7 pro
dosbox ver .74 (the latest)
warcraft 2

using the setup listed above, I've been playing this for years (without issue). Recently (without changing anything about windows configuration), the game has started acting funny

I can load and play as usual, but it's almost as if the opposing side (the computer) is stuck in super easy mode (except there are no difficulty settings that I know of). a couple of examples...

the opposing side is still gathering resources (chopping wood, mining gold), but they build very limited fortifications and armies (like sometimes the enemy barracks will create a limited max # of combatants--like 8-10. If I kill all 8-10, the enemy will create another 10--but no more. and eventually the enemy stops creating any new combatants at all.

i create and build my base, but the enemy sends a very limited # of troops against me, and eventually enemies stop aggressively attacking at all. they just camp out at their base, only responding when attacked. It's almost like the opposing side (the computer) is out of resources and is just idle. But the pawns are still actively chopping/mining, so I don't believe it's the case that the enemy runs out of resources.

I've played with and without cheat codes and it doesn't seem to affect gameplay.

I've uninstalled and reinstalled dosbox (including upgrading to the most recent version). I've downloaded and reinstalled the iso that I found online.

I'm not very technical--but I'm wondering if it's somehow related to the available memory on my computer?

Just not sure where to start to troubleshoot the issue.

any help would be greatly appreciated!

[dr_st]

It is a bug in the save/load mechanism of the base game; nothing to do with DOSBox. Some pointers don't get stored in the save file, then when you reload the save, with some probability, the AI will enter "dumb" mode and stop attacking. Then if you reload again, it sometimes starts behaving normally once more.

Someone even made a mod to fix it, not sure if it applies to the DOS version.
Read here:
https://forum.war2.ru/index.php?topic=6169.0
And here:
https://gamebanana.com/mods/288701