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designing armies according to their military function

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larienna
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Most games will have units printed on tokens or other mediums that most of the time, will represent a unit type like: Archers, cavalry, Battleship, carrier, etc.

Now the problem is when a game cover a larger scale, most of the time a battle ship token will not represent 1 single battle ship, but maybe 4 battleships accompanied with dozens of destroyers.

The bigger and bigger is the scale, it seems more logical to have a token per fleet or army rather than unit type. Which remove the option to customize the composition of of your fleet or army which also removes a part of the strategy of the game.

So I was wondering, what if instead a fleet or army token represented the purpose of that military force which have a unit composition abstracted in it. Here is a few example:

* Garrison army: Unit designed to defend a place
* Raiding Army: Unit designed to attack and damage surrounding territories without capturing them
* Siege Army: Unit designed to siege fortification and invade

* Battle Fleet: Fleet designed to engage other fleets in battle
* Landing Fleet: Fleet designed to capture new location
* Support Fleet: Design to help other fleets, defend areas, etc.
* Diplomatic/Merchant Fleet: Allow spreading of influence in the area

So this is just some random ideas.

Now is there any game that use this approach?

Is there a standard list of fleet and army functions that I could use?

X3M
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Battalions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battalion

Maybe this will bring some idea's.

pelle
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Joined: 08/11/2008
I think this is reasonably

I think this is reasonably common in strategic wargames. You have things like regular vs tank vs paratroop armies in ww2 games, or field armies vs garrisons in games about older wars. A quick look at some random strategic wargames will show you many variations that you can borrow ideas from.

larienna
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Somebody pointed out on BGG

Somebody pointed out on BGG that for example in axis and allies, the infantry token is actually a garrison army. An offensive army could be represented by a tank.

So the functions would be there, but the representation would be abstracted with unit types instead.

So an infantry unit would not just be composed of infantry.

john smith
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Joined: 06/26/2017
Jargon is important in

Jargon is important in Military type discussion. Army is a specific size of Military unit typically comprised of 100K to 200K personal. Every conceivable type of weapon would be in an army. Smaller sized tactical level units such as Divisions (aprox 25K personnel) have names that often refer to the most predominant type of weapons. Such as an armored Division or Infantry Division. But even those units have a wide array of various types weapons.

This guideline holds True for Historical eras from World War Two to today.

Axis and Allies is heavily abstracted and there is no specificity of scale for the pieces. Its is essentially a tactical level system with a strategic vernier. The tactics of that game tend to put Infantry in the defensive as they have a better chance of success in that rule system.

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