Slitherine

Well I have beaten elephants with cavalry more than a few times. In fact, I don't think elephants have ever played a decisive roll in any FOG game I have played. I think they are extremely weak against most everything except lights. (I always read that lights gave elephants fits) The most devastating anti-cavalry weapon I have seen are scythed chariots. (Heavy Chariots too, so the Indian army in immortal fire should be fun)

Xiggy wrote:Well I have beaten elephants with cavalry more than a few times. In fact, I don't think elephants have ever played a decisive roll in any FOG game I have played. I think they are extremely weak against most everything except lights. (I always read that lights gave elephants fits) The most devastating anti-cavalry weapon I have seen are scythed chariots. (Heavy Chariots too, so the Indian army in immortal fire should be fun)

Hmm, I find elephants can be a grab bag of usefullness or waste of aps, guess its all in the situation your able to use them

I find that if you use them as a barrier to your oppents cavalry they can be great, brigade them w a light foot screen and some mediums and its a pretty good manuever element ....

Some people have a very inflated view of the performance of certain troops because at one particular battle they are reported to have a specific effect. We have to take the results of hundreds of battles and effectively model them. If elephants were super troops everyone would use them. They weren't and a lot of people didn't bother. They have their uses but they are just a different tool.

iainmcneil wrote:Elephants massacre cavalry so I'm not sure what else could be expected from the rules

In my experience virtually everything massacres elephants. I beat elephants with cav regularly, although it's not the best way to do it, and can be painful on occasion.

76mm wrote:

iainmcneil wrote:Elephants massacre cavalry so I'm not sure what else could be expected from the rules

In my experience virtually everything massacres elephants. I beat elephants with cav regularly, although it's not the best way to do it, and can be painful on occasion.

keep in mind the singular and plurals here, as most lists only allow 1, maybe 2 elephants, there is no doudt the elephant will be defeated by 2-4 cavalry units despite the auto disorder they will have. You cant just launch your pachiderm into a sea of cavalry and expect it to do well, nor any other unit in game...
i guess i like my elephants and feel they are quite usefull to have, I just dont count on them to be the game winner!
I love the cartho list in large battles, you can get 3!

My favourite elephant was the one which wrecked my opponent's phalanx when we fought Cynophae (can't remember the ending of the name). Routed / frag'd about 5 HF BG on it's own & survived the battle merely disordered.

Equally I've seen them failed miserably.

So all in all I feel FoG has them about right.

TheGrayMouser wrote: keep in mind the singular and plurals here, as most lists only allow 1, maybe 2 elephants, there is no doudt the elephant will be defeated by 2-4 cavalry units despite the auto disorder they will have. You cant just launch your pachiderm into a sea of cavalry and expect it to do well, nor any other unit in game...

yeah, that's true, i usually throw 2-3 units at elephants, at which point they generally go down pretty quickly. Then there was the one time where one elephant held up four-five of my cav units for several turns...

The brother of my elephant no doubt

I think that everyone didn't use them because they didn't have access to them. I find it interesting that Rome, Carthage, Alexanders successors, and Indian armies into the renaissance used them. Also, if they were so ineffective, why did the greatest general of the ancient world fight them and be so impressed with them, that he incorporated them into his army. He also promptly turned around and went in the other direction after fighting them. As far as they being super weapons they aren't and probably weren't. I think you have overbalanced them is all. I fear camels more than elephants and that should not be the case, I have have camels in the Armies I play.

I've played Hereclea lots of times, it's one of my favourite scenarios.

In total I've played it 17 times versus opponents (DAG) and of these 8 (47%) had a final points difference of 9 or less and 5 (30%) were 5 points or less.

I've played as the Epirotes (Pyrrhus) 10 times and the Romans 7 times, so I've got a good perspective of both sides. My 3 losses have been split equally (as much as 3 can) with 2 as Epirotes and 1 as Romans, so the wins are pretty equal too.

I'd say that this is one of the most balanced scenarios, if not the most balanced scenario, of all the scenarios I've played (and that's a lot).

Please don't judge the balance of Hereclea by performance versus the AI - it is very weak. Play Hereclea against real opponents and you'll enjoy it as a really challenging and well balanced scenario.

The comments about elephants are fair. Elephants aren't much against foot, they are very good against cavalry.... the problem is for the elephants to catch them, especially if the opponent is trying to keep away from them! I guess that in the real battle the Romans had little or no knowledge of elephants, or maybe they didn't know that Pyrrhus had them until it was too late! He did keep them in reserve until the end.

Xiggy wrote:I think that everyone didn't use them because they didn't have access to them. I find it interesting that Rome, Carthage, Alexanders successors, and Indian armies into the renaissance used them. Also, if they were so ineffective, why did the greatest general of the ancient world fight them and be so impressed with them, that he incorporated them into his army. He also promptly turned around and went in the other direction after fighting them. As far as they being super weapons they aren't and probably weren't. I think you have overbalanced them is all. I fear camels more than elephants and that should not be the case, I have have camels in the Armies I play.

Just curious Xiggy , whom do you consider the greatest general of antiquity... By your post i am guessing you mean Scipio A.???

I'd probably go with Hannibal, but closely followed by Alexander with Pyrrhus and Scipio fighting out 3rd and 4th

Morbio wrote:I'd probably go with Hannibal, but closely followed by Alexander with Pyrrhus and Scipio fighting out 3rd and 4th

I agree with ya Morbio re Hannibal being #1,
In my mind he beats Alex as he did amazing things with much much less to work with
The others would be hard to rank....
Many of Pyrrus' contemporaries thought he was close to being #1

TheGrayMouser wrote:

Morbio wrote:I'd probably go with Hannibal, but closely followed by Alexander with Pyrrhus and Scipio fighting out 3rd and 4th

I agree with ya Morbio re Hannibal being #1,
In my mind he beats Alex as he did amazing things with much much less to work with
The others would be hard to rank....
Many of Pyrrus' contemporaries thought he was close to being #1

The problem is that Hannibal won battles but he didn't win the campaign. Winning the campaign/war in my book counts for a good deal more than just winning battles. This puts Alexander and Scipio Africanus ahead of Hannibal and Pyrrhus for me.

Chris

I never leave home with my elephants. Properly supported, they very tough because they ignore armor ratings and are less annoyed by poor terrain. Keep them on the ends of you HF line and cav will think twice about attacking your flanks. Plus, they're cool looking.

Deeter

batesmotel wrote:

TheGrayMouser wrote:

Morbio wrote:I'd probably go with Hannibal, but closely followed by Alexander with Pyrrhus and Scipio fighting out 3rd and 4th

I agree with ya Morbio re Hannibal being #1,
In my mind he beats Alex as he did amazing things with much much less to work with
The others would be hard to rank....
Many of Pyrrus' contemporaries thought he was close to being #1

The problem is that Hannibal won battles but he didn't win the campaign. Winning the campaign/war in my book counts for a good deal more than just winning battles. This puts Alexander and Scipio Africanus ahead of Hannibal and Pyrrhus for me.

Chris

Ah, yes, the winner is always in the end held in higher regard.
However I like to look on it as a whole.... Alexander accomplished what against whom? Was Rome (who conquered the Mediterranian world) a more dangerous foe than Darius, the monarch of a shaky regime that once defeated in 3 battles basically collapsed (except for the Bactrian resistance, which was only so tough as Bessus was holding on to his tenuous link as Darius's succesor) ? I think so. Also, Alexander had no vision for his conquets except to keep going, his legacy was the Succesor states that warred against eachother until they succumbed to Rome.

Strategy wise one could argue Darius was actually better than Alexander, his turning movement at Issus put Alexander in a horrible position , only overcome by alaxnders tactical skills and superior army...

As for Scipio? that is like saying Zhukov was better than Manstein simply because Berlin was overun in the end and not Moscow.

batesmotel wrote:

TheGrayMouser wrote:

Morbio wrote:I'd probably go with Hannibal, but closely followed by Alexander with Pyrrhus and Scipio fighting out 3rd and 4th

I agree with ya Morbio re Hannibal being #1,
In my mind he beats Alex as he did amazing things with much much less to work with
The others would be hard to rank....
Many of Pyrrus' contemporaries thought he was close to being #1

The problem is that Hannibal won battles but he didn't win the campaign. Winning the campaign/war in my book counts for a good deal more than just winning battles. This puts Alexander and Scipio Africanus ahead of Hannibal and Pyrrhus for me.

Chris

I guess some of this comes down to how you rate a general. I agree with the comments about not winning the war, but given a generally inferior and disparate set of troops one could argue that he did as well as anyone could have. Would Alexander, Scipio or Pyrrhus have done any better with what Hannibal had to work with?... one can only speculate. For me, the big pluses for Hannibal were:
1. He marched half way round the Med, often through hostile territory, to take the battle to his enemy (no mean feat).
2. He managed to persuade a whole bunch of non-allied people to fight with him, indeed they accepted him as their leader.
3. He won numerous battles against the odds and set some new standards by the tactics he employed.
4. He survived for years in enemy territory without the support of his own country.
5. He was one of the first, if not the first, general to realise that a battle is more than just line up and fight. He understood supply lines and the value of disrupting the enemies lines of supply.
Had he the support of Carthage in his invasion of Italy then I'm sure that the Roman empire would have been the one to be wiped out rather than Carthage.

Of course, Alexander conquered just about all the known world. A fantastic achievement, but he did have some excellent well trained troops, which he should have credit for too, that were mostly already loyal to him. His tactical brilliance on the battlefield was also second to none.

The thing that tips the balance for me was the survival without supply in enemy territory for such a long time.

Remember too that Hannibal was basically fighting a lost cause, Carthages time was basically over. In terms of resources , men , and , you could argue political 'spirit', Rome had all the cards. also, Hannibal, although he had an open hand in Spain, was not the leadership of Carthage.
Hannibals plan in Italy was a slim one but likly the only one feasable, which was to break up the Roman/Latin confederacy by winning field battles and hoping that Romes old conquered areas would rise up to join him. Unfortunately he was a least a century too late, the Etruscans, Samnites etc interest in being "liberated" were just gone...

Alexanders tactical victories were pure genius, but again, Darius empire comprised over 30 kingdoms and satrapies of different nationalities and races, it had no cohesion other than what was present in Darius's person, and once gone game over....

Also intersetingly enough, there is a good case that Alexender actually lost the ist battle against the persians in Asia minor, (Granicus) , everything we know about that battle is very very odd , ilogical and possibly pure propoganda!

You guys know a lot more about these commanders and battles than I do, so tell me, when you play a FoG historical scenario (any FoG historical scenario) do you feel that the strategic and tactical questions that you have to face are the similar to those that you know (from your reading or other sources) the commanders represented actually faced?

The point I that I was trying to make originally is that (whether because of the rules or the ai or something else) I don't, and that it would be great if FoG could be tweaked so that we did?

logos wrote:You guys know a lot more about these commanders and battles than I do, so tell me, when you play a FoG historical scenario (any FoG historical scenario) do you feel that the strategic and tactical questions that you have to face are the similar to those that you know (from your reading or other sources) the commanders represented actually faced?

The point I that I was trying to make originally is that (whether because of the rules or the ai or something else) I don't, and that it would be great if FoG could be tweaked so that we did?

No, i honestly dont believe any turn based move a unit at a time game will ever do that....for multiple reasons... The true tactical decisions made were much much more influenced by the operational, and even strategic and political considerations that "caused" the battle to be fought when where, how and with what resources.... Even a game that has a strategic layer with the tactical is still missing...something..

Ironically, I feel the best simulation of what a commander might really have faced is the Total war games, IF and ONLY IF you play with "commander view only" (what this is is the camera is over only your command unit....) If you turn off the hud showing the map overlay, you as the player are essentially blind about anyhing going on oustside of your very real field of view, this makes your initial deployment and battle plan for FORMATIONS, not individual units critical... in the end once commited, the battle is literally out of your hands and up to the virtual soldiers

However, I must point out I am and always will be the greater fan of turnbased hex games!