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With W=B+K and G=R+N the Persians finally won with 54.6%. I have now
started a run where black moves first, to see how much the white advantage
is. As I have never done this kind of testing in asymmetric variants
before, I should be careful: there is the theoretical possibility that
Fairy-Max plays better with one color than with the other. This is because
of the order it generates moves: it scans the board looking for own pieces,
and for white it typically encounters Pawns first, while for black it
encounters Pieces first. And when two moves have equal score, it plays the
first one. So there could be a bias towards Pawn moves for white, and
against them for black. A style difference which could affect playing
strength. Normally I average out such a difference by not playing from a
single position, but from a pair with inverted colors. E.g. give white the
Spartan army on even games, annd black on odd games, and then play a match
with alternating colors, so that the same player always has the same army,
and the score kept by WinBoard is useful. Except that here I cannot do
that, because the Pawns are not identically, so I would either end up with
a Persian army with Hoplites, or with FIDE Pawns that move backwards, when
I set it up on the other side of the board. So I would really have to
change the directionality of the Pawn defintions in the fmax.ini file. If
there turns out to be a significant effect, I would have to conduct all
future tests as 200 games with black Spartans plus 200 games with white
Spartans and the reflected game definition, rather than just playing 400
games.

I guess it would be good to make a version of Fairy-Max that would
automatically reflect the move direction of all the black pieces, so that,
for instance, in orthodox Chess you would only have to define the Pawn one
time. That should not be too difficult. Then all pieces you define can be
automatically used for white and black, in stead of asymmetric pieces
having to be defined twice.

Btw, after 200 games the test with W=B+N and G=R+K was still practically
equal (50.5% in favor of the Spartans).