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?
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.