There are already several pretty good mods out for it.
I think the biggest problem with the game wasn't the bad AI but rather lots of bugs and an incompete game (the Church and all the stuff you could do with was never fully implemented).
There are at least two good mods that I know of already. There was a third one that I really liked but Last time I tried to find it I couldn't.
This
LINK has links to two of the mods. The Hyperion and NOVA mods for Emperor of the Fading Suns.
I modded it a little but the built in problems that modding can't fix just turned me off of it after awhile.