NOTE: This post was originally longer, with five detailed points, but I lost some of it when I went to post it, and my log-in had timed out!
I purchased Great Battles on gog myself, for the sentimental value if nothing else...though I admit the hot-seat option had some appeal.
But I also wanted to see, after years of playing (and loving) FOG, if some of my fond memories of GBoH were accurate.
FOG and GBoH both have their strengths and weaknesses. FOG is without peer in its online multi-player potential - I love the ease of posting and accepting game challenges. The sheer number of army lists available for player use is a big selling point as well, and the ease with which you can create a scenario. There are also huge numbers of player generated scenarios, but I think one of the things the game does best is the
"random battle" of two players where neither the terrain nor the armies is drawn from a historical encounter. The only thing that hinders the potential greatness of this feature, is that the game lacks a "terrain randomizer" capable of creating completely variable maps for each game.
This could be programmed SO EASILY...I wrote a program like that in BASIC for a wargame I was playing back in the 1970's for pete's sake!
GBoH did have a scenario editor available in the Collector's Edition, and players posted an impressive list of scenarios for the game for various historical battles, usually based on scenarios from the Great Battles of History table-top hex and counter wargame. Though there were also some fun alternative-history ones I remember. They also used to run various tournaments and campaigns, much like FOG does. Of course, all those websites are long since defunct as far as I know, so you're now limited to the few historical battles in the games themselves.
Great Battles had a few points that I really see as strengths that would make FOG a better game if emulated:
1. All units did not have an equal rout value.
A light infantry skirmisher unit was worth 1 point (such units were expendable and generally chased off the battlefield more than killed, so they had a tendency to straggle back into camp and rejoin the army after the battle, unless ridden down by cavalry). Light Infantry that was capable of melee combat (like Peltasts) were worth 2 points, as were Elephants (which were much more unreliable/dangerous in that game) and chariots (which were not overpowered as in FOG). For other troops, their rout value was equal to their "Troop Quality" (TQ) rating. What this means is that a unit of Protected Offensive Spears is going to vary in rout point value depending on whether they're Poor, Average, Superior, or Elite. In GBoH, I believe the highest Troop Quality number you ever saw was a 9, just to illustrate how high it could get relative to the single point value of skirmishers. To this was added the detail that Pike Phalanxes were huge, cumbersome units that took up two hexes, and usually took quite a bit of punishment to break...so their value was double their TQ.
To represent the MAJOR impact on ancient armies of a leader falling in battle (the tide of battle was often turned by such events, resulting in the rout of armies that previously had the upper hand) Generals who were killed were worth
5X their "Initiative Rating" a value that was somewhat equivalent to the different levels of Leader in FOG. A one of a kind Leader like Alexander was worth TEN TIMES the number! (Imagine how his army would have reacted if they were all the way in India and he had died at Hydaspes!)
Though this was based on an different set of stats and numbers, it could EASILY be adapted for use in FOG, by simply making the rout value of a unit equal to its purchase point value. That would mean that the loss of your Household Guard Heavy Cavalry would be as important to the army as the loss of 4 or 5 lesser units...as it should be.
2. Units could move/attack in Groups, and for many armies it was harder to move them individually.
This is a problem with FOG that I associate with the transition from table top to computer screen, because on the table-top a "battle-group" is a formation of multiple "stands", and usually much less maneuverable than the battle-groups/units of FOG digital, which effectively operate as one stand independent combat elements. That can tend to give it a much more modern feel. In GBoH, for example, a Roman General could either issue a "group command" or issue orders to individual units equal to his Initiative value. They usually had low Initiative numbers, so would only be able to move, say, 2 or 3 units in individual directions. But he could issue a GROUP order, and an entire line of maybe ten units would march forward in formation! They could be issued movement orders, or be ordered to attack...leading to one of my favorite details in the game...Roman troops would halt and throw pilum before charging the enemy! Each unit carried like 2 javelins for game purposes, and once it used them it had no further missle capability...but this allowed them to inflict losses on the enemy (or disorder them) before melee -
a fair representation of their historic effect that FOG would do well to include. But this use of group movement orders also allowed distinctions to be made between different armies tactical doctrines: in contrast to the Romans, the Carthaginian Leaders could attempt Group Orders, but had a lower chance of carrying them out successfully. At the same time, their Leaders usually had a higher Initiative Rating, and could move more specific units individually...this let them do things like more effectively maneuver cavalry around the Roman flanks.
To briefly reconstruct the last three points that I lost:
3. "Impact Foot" type units that use a thrown weapon just before contact, would actually make a missle attack at one hex range.
I preferred this way of modeling that tactical doctrine, rather than a modifier against certain troop types in Impact and melee.
Reason being, that in FOG terms, you could potentially Disrupt your enemy with pilums before contact, and I think that more accurately represents the real effect they had.
4. GBoH chariots were not over-powered. They could only operate effectively on the flattest, barest terrain. Anything rough might as well have been impassable to them. Compared to Cavalry, they had a horrible turning radius. They were primarily mobile firing platforms for missile troops, being nearly worthless as shock combat units. In fairness, in the days when they were effectively used in this role, Cavalry was in its infancy, and they were mostly conducting their melee attacks against other chariots or some pretty light-weight infantry! As mentioned above, chariots only were worth 2 rout points in GBoH, because they just weren't a big loss, and were unlikely to have much impact, unlike the tanks that are Heavy Chariots in FOG.
5. Elephants were handled better in GBoH in my opinion. Based on everything I've read about War Elephants, their greatest reliable impact on the battlefield were the terror they instilled in humans and horses. Once humans had fought them a few times, and learned what tactics to use, they were able to overcome their terror. But in terms of actual damage done, they were much better on paper than in reality, and I do think that FOG models this part well. But I think what would be good would be to change the perception of what it means when a unit of war elephants "rout". For humans, this means that their morale breaks, and they flee. For elephants, rather than "routing" it should probably be thought of as "going out of control". Sometimes they responded to injury and frightening situations by panicking and trying to escape the threat, but they didn't do it in the same way as a human would. They would stampede. And when one or more 10,000 pound animals stampede,
they don't go around clumps of beings that weigh 200 pounds. They send them flying like bowling pins. Sometimes, rather than panicking and stampeding, they would become enraged and go berserk, ignoring the orders of their mahout and indiscriminately attacking whoever they felt like attacking. In GBoH, then, war elephants that "routed" would move about the board for 2 or 3 turns, in a random direction each turn, until they either left the map or were killed (because units they contacted wouldn't be trampled docilely, they would fight them, potentially killing the war elephant unit). As they careened around the map, they could easily set off chain reactions, routing other elephants who would join the stampede. And THAT matches descriptions of period accounts of the sort of disasters that led leaders to stop using war elephants in armies...
I no longer have those games installed, but I do still have those patch files you created saved just in case...