Slitherine

Is it only me, or is the value of Bow Armies extremely dependent on who they are fighting?

My easiest potluck game ever was when I got Indians against Scythians/Saka. My worst deal was Kushite Egyptians versus Greeks.

Generalizing a little, a Bowmen Army seems excellent against a Horse Army, but hopeless against Hoplites. May well be perfectly historical, but still a little frustrating.

How would you play a shooty army against Bows? How would you play a Bow Army against a mostly melee-oriented army?

Heavy infantry did play a big role in decline of chariot and bow heavy armies that had dominated warfare for hundreds of years. Positioning and angling the bows preemptively for maximum damage and keeping in mind that bows can only cause cohesion drop once per turn and doing the highest damages first can help a bit but hoplite armies will still have the advantage. Most highly specialized armies have some hard counters.

Take advantage of terrain as much as possible. But it still boils down to luck.

In case of horse army dealing with bowmen army, I will force these bowmen into melee from good angle. But if bowmen army has good terrain(not open for example) or elephants, and hose army consists of pure horse, I have no idea so far.

I find I am also getting very good results with Horse Army versus Hoplites.

So it appears Horse-Bow-Hoplite is the Scissors-Stone-Paper of early FoG2 armies.