Slitherine

Intro information: I playtested for the original Pike & Shot, played several hours of 'Campaigns' and played dozens of hours of Battle Academy. I am a big fan of them both, so the engine choice was A-OK with me.
I also have a basic familiarity with Field of Glory TT as I own a number of the books (I collect Osprey and RPG rules, so FoG was a close enough middle ground that I bought a few). As I understand it the FoG TT creators were involved in the production of FoG 2, so that's cool.

I have had fun playing every match so far. I have actually won more than lost, which certainly is not true in Pike & Shot. Even though I have pretty low frustration tolerances, even losing isn't too bad, because (unlike Total War) an inferior army doesn't just get overrun and destroyed instantly, with some clever maneuver I can at least delay my annihilation.

Cavalry for me has been much easier to use than it was in Pike & Shot. I don't know why, but I just fail with cavalry in P&S. I am a big fan of cataphracted cavalry, and I like how useful the cataphracts are on the battlefield. I really enjoy pinning down the enemy heavy cavalry with my cataphracts and tanking through them.

Infantry combat is very fun, and the variety of infantry units is cool. Even if some of them suck horribly. I am very biased towards heavy infantry for aesthetic reasons and command style - I like to keep a well ordered front line, advance slowly, and become agressive as Hell once contact is made. The phalanx and Roman infantry are obviously perfect for this, so the game dovetails with exactly how I fight in this respect.

Elephants are super annoying, and I'm not sure how to either use them or counter them. But they do add an odd element to how the game plays, I like how they don't just constantly retreat like much of the other cavalry, and I like how they become the foci of knotted battles.

One thing I do wish was more effective (though I can understand why it isn't, in the circumstances) is the deployment of all-cavalry armies. I am a steppephile and a Persiaphile, so I'd like to see scenarios where they're more effective.

The game is pretty fun, and I'm very interested to see some more expansions to add armies from earlier and later time periods. There was an old DOS-based hex game (Battles of the Ancient World?) where you could play the Egyptians and Babylonians, it was a ton of fun.

Really interesting to see another player's perspective.

Funnily enough, although my play style sounds similar....(I am a big cheerleader for the Ptolemaic Army) I have found in my MP battles and SP battles that Cataphract Cav has been generally easier to handle as an opponent that I would have expected. Yes they are powerful but they are slow and ponderous and have been dealt with ok by the other more nimble superior cav.

With regard to the Steppe Armies and other mainly Cav forces I have actually found the Skythian Nomad Cav to be pretty useful. Nomad Cav is not quite as brittle despite having the evade ability and they seem to deal more damage than other light Cav archers.

Overall having played a lot of P&S but almost no FOG1 I find myself already with about 70 hours logged on Steam and have to say it is my game of the last 10 years taking into account its current state and ongoing potential.

devoncop wrote: Funnily enough, although my play style sounds similar....(I am a big cheerleader for the Ptolemaic Army

I think this is probably historically true. Training steady, close rank infantry is hard, equipping them is expensive, losing them is a disaster BUT if you have the money, the men, and the time it seems like heavy infantry really did kick all kinds of ass in the ancient and medieval world. Heck, by the time of the Renaissance half of the men on the battlefield were wearing plate armor!
You can see it as analogous to weight classes. Despite all kinds of snowflake arguments to the contrary, a very well trained 6'5" 240lb muscle guy is going to really mess up most equally trained smaller guys.
I imagine if he had the option to 'choose his army' at the beginning of every battle, Alexander would have used even more pikemen than he did.

Elephants are quite simple actually - initially, try to hit them with as many javelinmen as you can, reducing their numbers a bit. then, check which unit they will attack, and place another unit behind it to the side so when your unit falls back, you can attack elephant from side.. these attacks are most lethal against them, and they usually break quick (if you killed some with javelins) Worst thing that can happen to you is to let undamaged elephants attack you straight on, while you dont have any reserves...

JaM2013 wrote:Elephants are quite simple actually - initially, try to hit them with as many javelinmen as you can, reducing their numbers a bit. then, check which unit they will attack, and place another unit behind it to the side so when your unit falls back, you can attack elephant from side.. these attacks are most lethal against them, and they usually break quick (if you killed some with javelins) Worst thing that can happen to you is to let undamaged elephants attack you straight on, while you dont have any reserves...

I wanted to do stuff like that, but I was outnumbered in units and outflanked by the enemy so there was no chance of lining up multiple units to hit his elephants when he had multiple units to intercept mine with. As for javelin, very good if you can shoot at the elephants, but players avoid that by distracting your troops and then dashing in with an elephant to immediate engage in melee to avoid both ranged damage and flank attacks.