Slitherine

There has been several discussions in the forum lately that touched on infantry vs cavalry balance in the game. It reminded me of the Kushan vs Indo-Greek match up in the Christmas 2019 tournament. Historically, the Kushans conquered the Indo-Greeks. But in game, that match felt like a lop-sided roflstomp in the Indo-Greek's favor. In fact, I'd say it was the most lop-sided match up I've seen in FOG2. So, to everyone who played in that last tournament, I'd like to hear your experiences and observations regarding that pair of games. I'm especially interested in hearing from anyone who won their Kushan game, but lost the Indo-Greek game.

I'll start. The main reasons playing Kushans against Indo-Greeks in that match felt like bashing my head against a brick wall for me:
- The cataphracts were too slow to close with mass archers in a single turn, so inevitably gets intercepted by elephants or pikes.
- Horse archers could close with the mass archers and charge them, but they did not like to stick in out in melee with them. Of course falling back from melee with mass archers is basically suicide for the horse archers.
- Kushan elephants had the impossible dual task of keeping the Indo-Greek elephants off of your cataphracts, and delaying the pikes from smashing your infantry. All the while somehow avoiding getting shot up by all of the massed archers.
- The Kushan infantry were numerous enough to paint a giant target on their heads the second they step out from rough terrain, but not numerous enough to blast through enemy light infantry AND place effective fire on enemy elephants.

Anyway, please share your experiences from your matches.

pompeytheflatulent wrote: ↑Fri Mar 27, 2020 3:13 pm Historically, the Kushans conquered the Indo-Greeks.

It is worth noting that the Indo-Greeks had split into at least two and possibly more kingdoms, and were in terminal decline. It would be very suprising if they weren't heavily outnumbered by the Kushans historically. The biggest advantage of mounted armies in reality was their strategic ability to "get there fastest with the mostest". In the game they are constrained to equal points, which sidesteps their main historical advantage, so they should not necessarily be expected to do as well as they did historically.

Also, although the Indo-Greeks did seem to have the advantage in the tournament matchup, it was hardly a ROFLstomp. (At least not in my two games).

Is it possible to retrieve the win percentages for Kushans and Indo-Greeks for that tournament? That was the first time I experienced such a lop-sided match up that it felt that the game balance was fundamentally broken. A cavalry army struggling to win against a medium foot army on what was, if I recall correctly, a wide open map. It was as if the Romans consistently struggled to beat the Etruscans or Slave revolt.

pompeytheflatulent wrote: ↑Fri Mar 27, 2020 4:22 pm Is it possible to retrieve the win percentages for Kushans and Indo-Greeks for that tournament?

All the scores can be seen on the score page for the tournament.

rbodleyscott wrote: ↑Fri Mar 27, 2020 5:08 pm

pompeytheflatulent wrote: ↑Fri Mar 27, 2020 4:22 pm Is it possible to retrieve the win percentages for Kushans and Indo-Greeks for that tournament?

All the scores can be seen on the score page for the tournament.

Are the scores arrange the same way so that the first player listed is always Kushan in game 1 and Indo-Greek in game 2?

There are also those general Army statistics : viewtopic.php?f=501&t=84955&p=780230&hi ... ns#p780230

(not sure it is meaningful here though)

Athos1660 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 27, 2020 5:40 pm There are also those general Army statistics : viewtopic.php?f=501&t=84955&p=780230&hi ... ns#p780230

(not sure it is meaningful here though)

Unfortunately not. Those ratings only apply to the digital league and their opponents could nave been anyone.

pompeytheflatulent wrote: ↑Fri Mar 27, 2020 5:15 pm

rbodleyscott wrote: ↑Fri Mar 27, 2020 5:08 pm

pompeytheflatulent wrote: ↑Fri Mar 27, 2020 4:22 pm Is it possible to retrieve the win percentages for Kushans and Indo-Greeks for that tournament?

All the scores can be seen on the score page for the tournament.

Are the scores arrange the same way so that the first player listed is always Kushan in game 1 and Indo-Greek in game 2?

Yes.

Not counting the games in the tournament where there was a no-show, there were a total of 88 games played.

Of those 88 games:

- 23 (26%) won by Kushans
- 8 (9%) draws
- 57 (65%) won by Indo-greeks

What's even more glaring, out of 44 pairs of players, there was only one pair where both opponents won their Kushan games and lost their Indo-greek games.

With a sample size of 88 players of various skills, a medium foot army was able to beat a cavalry army two-thirds of the time on a map with very little rough ground. There is something seriously wrong balance-wise regarding cavalry armies.

Cunningcairn wrote: ↑Fri Mar 27, 2020 8:09 pm

Athos1660 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 27, 2020 5:40 pm There are also those general Army statistics : viewtopic.php?f=501&t=84955&p=780230&hi ... ns#p780230

(not sure it is meaningful here though)

Unfortunately not. Those ratings only apply to the digital league and their opponents could nave been anyone.

Those statistics provide indirect information about the subject of this thread, that is the infantry vs cavalry balance through the examples of the Kushans and the Indo-Greeks by supplying, for example, the frequency of use of a cavalry army, the Kushans, and its frequency of wins, both compared to other armies especially those more infantry-oriented, giving some info about the habits of the players, their preference for a type of army, which kind of armies they feel most at ease, etc.

It's not statistical way to just compare two numbers as the random variable has a certain standard deviation.

pompeytheflatulent wrote: ↑Fri Mar 27, 2020 11:46 pmWith a sample size of 88 players of various skills, a medium foot army was able to beat a cavalry army two-thirds of the time on a map with very little rough ground. There is something seriously wrong balance-wise regarding cavalry armies.

And if you look at the other previous tournaments you will see that there are lots of other matchups with similar results. This is one of the things I keep an eye on. I am not suggesting that the result doesn't mean that the Indo-Greek had the advantage in this particular matchup, but such missmatches are in fact common.

It is rather inaccurate to treat the matchup as a typical example of a "cavalry army vs a medium infantry army", as it ignores the effect of elephants, pikes and massed archery. And you yourself pointed out that a major part of the problem was that the Kushan heavy cavalry were cataphracts and hence only have a 3 square charge. In short, the matchup is sufficiently atypical as not to say much at all about cavalry armies vs medium foot armies in general.

Experience does show that pure cavalry armies often don't do too well in the FOG2 Digital League, but balanced armies with a substantial proportion of cavalry do very well indeed. So one has to consider that any change to the balance to make pure cavalry armies more effective might make balanced armies with large amounts of cavalry too effective.

pompeytheflatulent wrote: ↑Fri Mar 27, 2020 11:46 pm Not counting the games in the tournament where there was a no-show, there were a total of 88 games played.

Of those 88 games:

- 23 (26%) won by Kushans
- 8 (9%) draws
- 57 (65%) won by Indo-greeks

What's even more glaring, out of 44 pairs of players, there was only one pair where both opponents won their Kushan games and lost their Indo-greek games.

With a sample size of 88 players of various skills, a medium foot army was able to beat a cavalry army two-thirds of the time on a map with very little rough ground. There is something seriously wrong balance-wise regarding cavalry armies.

That is very interesting. Looking at the 2 army lists I would have thought the Kushans would have won in more open terrain.

Well it wasn't really open terrain. There was a very significant hill that affected the battle.

rbodleyscott wrote: ↑Sat Mar 28, 2020 12:20 pm Well it wasn't really open terrain. There was a very significant hill that affected the battle.

That hill was the only reason I won my Kushan game! It was too far back in the Indo-greek backfield to dominate the map, and too narrow to fit the whole Indo-greek army. My opponents right wing got too fond of the scenic picnic spot on top of that hill, and didn't join the battle until right before the Indo-greek left wing was overwhelmed.

In the several practice matches I played beforehand, and the only way the Kushans stood a chance was if the Indo-greek player remained static, allowing the Kushans to mass overwhelming numbers on a small portion of the Indo-greek line. If the Indo-greek player advanced aggressively, like in my practice games against ConstantinIX, the Kushans got crushed. In those two games both ConstantinIX and myself swung the Indo-greek army like a door, with a small clump of trees as the hinge, and crushed the Kushans in open ground. It was a 40-0 blowout in favor of the Indo-greeks both games.

The results could also point to Medium Foot being a bit too strong in the open rather than cavalry being too weak. FoG2 Medium infantry is essentially just heavy infantry with free perks until they start losing. Having all those massed archers against the Kushan horse archers doesn't hurt the Indo-Greek list either.

Interesting. Coming from a heavy infantry perspective, Indo-Greeks always seem a little weak since they have maximum 2 pikes and 2 elephants, and that's it for their sturdy troops unless they have allies. I can see how those units would be bad news for cavalry armies........but surely they can get around 4 whole units, right?

I could use a relaxed non-competitive game these days, so if anyone in this thread wants to test this out with me on MP, let me know. I'm happy to try Kushans and see what I can do.

MVP7 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 28, 2020 7:39 pm The results could also point to Medium Foot being a bit too strong in the open rather than cavalry being too weak. FoG2 Medium infantry is essentially just heavy infantry with free perks until they start losing. Having all those massed archers against the Kushan horse archers doesn't hurt the Indo-Greek list either.

Could be. The two thureophoroi the Indo-greeks have can stand against cataphracts in the open as long as they don't roll terribly receiving the charge. And Indian close combat foot have no problem chasing off horse archers and making them waste turns turning around, or herd them to be shot like fish in a barrel by mass archers.

I don't know if it really adds much to the conversation, but for what it's worth I've been using Kushan in the FOG2DL Late Antiquity league this season and it is the worst army I have ever used lol. Don't get me wrong, I'm in Division A in my second season (and first time in late antiquity), and so was not expecting to do well, but Kushan seems to lose to everything. I can't even win casual practice games against new players with it lol. I wouldn't say that's because of some generic medium foot vs cavalry army balance though, but because of the Kushan list in particular.

Kushan has very few infantry units, and their mainline consists of Cataphracts and Elephants, who are very expensive and so always in smaller number than the enemy line, but also very vulnerable to flanks, and in the case of Elephants ranged fire. Their large, both light and normal, horse archer complement is poorly armored and so vulnerable to ranged fire, and not complemented by enough light foot, and so typically at disadvantage in exchanging fire, so you can't win if you go all ranged units either. There's a certain advantage to quantity over quality it seems in competitive games in FOG, and Kushan is just not able to bring large quantities of average melee units (whether mounted or not).

I think generally speaking cavalry heavy armies can do very well in competitive games against medium foot armies if they have nice complements of light foot, a decent line of cheap heavy foot, and a wide variety of cavalry quality, type, and cost so you can get a lot of them etc...but Kushan doesn't have that.

The above explanation that historically Kushan would have outnumbered their opponents makes sense as for why their army is the way it is, so maybe it should stay that way, but I certainly won't use it in a tournament again lol. Oh well, lesson learned.

rbodleyscott wrote: ↑Sat Mar 28, 2020 12:20 pm Well it wasn't really open terrain. There was a very significant hill that affected the battle.

Aah ok! I didn't play in that so was unaware of the terrain.