Slitherine

I picked up FoG II not long after release last year, but sadly wasn't able to give it the time needed to properly learn the rules. Looking over some old games recently, I decided to fire it up and learn to play properly, and boy am I glad I did. I'm new to wargames (both digital and table top), and a novice in respect to ancient history, but I'm learning and having a blast.

I played through the Hannibal campaign, but it was after downloading the Rise of AI mod and completing Mithridates' campaign that this game properly got its hooks into me. The Mithridates campaign was simply fantastic: in the first battle I lined up my troops against the "Skythians" (can't say I was taught about them in school) and was shocked to see an almost all cavalry force bearing down on me, evading my charges and shooting my Cataphracts to smithereens. I eventually cornered them and secured victory, but only after taking heavy losses. Things picked up from there as my phalanxes rolled through all and sundry, but then Mithridates--presumably on the advice of some overpaid consultant--decided a restructure was in order. My legionaries--pale imitations of those they were lining up against--crumbled, and I was left cursing Mithridates' rash decision. Without the advantage of numbers (given the difficulty setting) and with poorer quality troops, battle 5 in the campaign was a doozy, far far harder than anything I'd encountered in the game before. But it got me thinking through new tactics and I eked out victory with the aid of a second attempt.

By the end of the campaign, I'd played with 3 different army lists, against 3 or 4 different opponents and finally began to understand the variety and depth this game has (I haven't even touched a DLC yet).

Anyway, I'm not usually a big forum poster, but am having so much fun that I thought the developers should know.

I have one question though. The campaign accords with my (very basic) understanding of history by throwing away the phalanx in favour of a more manoeuvrable legionary style unit, yet I couldn't help but feel my army was worse off for this change. It's likely just because I'm not particularly good at the game, or that the extra manoeuvrability wasn't that useful to me as I was so heavily outnumbered, or that it's easier to protect flanks in the game than it was in antiquity, but I still would much prefer to have a trusty phalanx receiving the charge of a Roman legion than the imitation legionaries I was stuck with. I'm curious as to whether phalanxes in this game are perhaps stronger against legionaries than they were historically? If not, why did generals move away from them?

In any case, it's a point of curiosity and not a dig at the historicity of the game, which has clearly been made by people far more knowledgeable than me. I don't think any answer could tarnish my enjoyment!

Thanks for your kind words.

On paper, the phalanx was indeed stronger than Roman legionaries, but in practice they lost almost every battle they fought against them - Pyrrhos's indecisive "Pyrrhic victories" being the only major exception. This has been attributed to various causes, including the phalanx's need to maintain a completely solid front to avoid local flanking, and the difficulties of achieving this over the course of a battle against a more flexible opponent.

After several defeats, Mithridates did what many wargamers do, he junked his army and copied his opponents' army. This didn't work out too well for him either, but I guess it was worth a try.

He did in fact win several battles against ad-hoc Roman armies including lots of local non-Roman auxiliary troops, but whenever he came up against the main Roman field army, he lost. Nevertheless he put up a far more prolonged and determined fight against the Romans than any other Hellenistic king.

(In case you didn't guess, Mithridates is something of a hero to me, though I have little doubt that he wasn't a very nice person).

Obviously, if he had won all his battles, he probably would not have switched to imitation legionaries, but the historically-based campaigns try to follow the actual historical events as far as possible. If you want to play a Mithridates campaign against the Romans in which he keeps the phalanx throughout, you can set this up as a sandbox campaign, using the "Field of Glory II Campaigns" module, and the Pontic armies will not switch to the later army list. You will still get battles against opponents other than the Romans, but probably not as many.

Don't get me wrong, I'm really glad it follows the historical path. For one thing I got to learn a bit about history, but I also learned how to play with a different set of units, and even more importantly to make use of the terrain (all the things I never got around to the first time over). All of that was the result of the new tactical challenge presented by the game, which is exactly what I want!

I was just hoping to satisfy a point of curiosity about why my phalanxes hold up better than they might have done historically, and I think your point about local flanking goes a long way to answering that.

(Edit: I'm also doing some reading of my own, so thank you for opening up this world to me)

Very much looking forward to playing this campaign. The eternal trouble with Rbodleyscott games: So much content, so little time!

sIg3b wrote: ↑Wed Nov 21, 2018 7:44 pm Very much looking forward to playing this campaign. The eternal trouble with Rbodleyscott games: So much content, so little time!

I remember PBM Umpire (and Scened).

Happy days, was that early 90's?

Yeah, Mithridatis campaign was my favourite already during beta. It's really nice how it changes opponents and your own army lists and requires that you adapt.

rbodleyscott wrote: ↑Wed Nov 21, 2018 8:14 am

(In case you didn't guess, Mithridates is something of a hero to me, though I have little doubt that he wasn't a very nice person).

Hmm, that's the guy who ordered slaughtering of tens of thousands Roman citizens, right? Not a very nice indeed. Though I guess it wasn't that uncommon at the time.

And still, we all tend to love the little guys fighting much stronger enemies. He had no chance winning, Rome would simply always send another army...