I’ve been doing some more thinking about this whole special infantry unit concept, and I’m starting to conclude that we’re perhaps approaching the concept from the wrong direction.
As we can see from the many pages of discussion threads that have been devoted to this subject for the past couple of weeks, this unit is proving to be very problematic. I’m beginning to think that many (though not all) of the problems with this unit can be traced back to one common cause: the concept of creating it as a single unit that would apply to every nation. This concept was originally proposed for purposes of simplicity. What seems to be emerging, however, is that this concept is actually creating more problems than it solves and is boxing us into a corner. And upon further thought, it seems to me that the “problem” which this concept was intended to solve may not actually exist in the first place. Let me try to explain what I mean by this.
As I understand it, the “simplicity of a single unit” concept was based on the premise that it would be much easier for special infantry to be represented on the game board (whether physical or electronic) if it consisted of a single unit than if it consisted of half-a-dozen nationally distinct units. At first glance, that seems an obvious conclusion. But let’s actually look at this more closely. And to do so, let’s compare the practical elements of two different alternatives: the concept of having a generic special infantry unit that applies to everyone, and the alternative model of each country having its own distinct special infantry unit.
In doing this comparison (which follows below), it won’t be necessary to get into the details of what specific price or capabilities each unit has. It won’t be necessary because I’ll be talking about these units at a broad conceptual level, not at the level of how many dollars each unit costs or what specific attack value it has or whether it gets an amphibious attack bonus or whether it can be transported by cruiser or anything like that. The argument I’ll be making doesn’t depend on any of those specific numbers or factors. The argument I’ll be making simply reflects the much more general concept that any A&A unit is defined by its particular package of characteristics (whatever those happen to be), and that units should be considered to belong to different types if they have different packages of characteristics. These different types can be similar to each other if their characteristics are similar, or very different from each other if their characteristics are very different, but they still remain distinct unit types.
In doing this comparison, I’ll also use – just for purposes of discussion – some hypothetical nationally-distinct special infantry unit types. They’re just examples, and I’ll limit them to just five countries. The examples are somewhat arbitrary, in the sense that different options for each country might exist…let’s say, for example, using Siberians troops rather than Guards units for the Soviets. Again, the examples and their specific numbers aren’t important at this time, since we’re talking about these units at a broad conceptual level; this is just to give us something concrete to work with for this particular comparison.
The units I’ll use for the nationally-unique special infantry forces are:
US / Marines
UK / Commandos
USSR / Guards
Germany / Waffen SS
Japan / SNLF
The generic special infantry forces, by contrast, would look something like this:
US / Generic elite infantry
UK / Generic elite infantry
USSR / Generic elite infantry
Germany / Generic elite infantry
Japan / Generic elite infantry
Let’s start by looking at the issue of unit identification.
Whether you’re playing on a physical board or on an electronic one, any elite infantry unit – whether generic or nationally-unique – has to be represented by a sculpt or icon which has some kind of visual country coding (because otherwise the players wouldn’t be able to tell which unit belongs to what country). There are three basic ways to do this:
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At its simplest, the unit has a single generic “international” design, but each country has it in its own distinctive colour.
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At the next level of sophistication, the unit looks like each nation’s normal distinctive infantry design, but in a variant colour (like the dark green Marines in the original Pacific game).
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At the highest level of sophistication, the unit has a distinctive design for each nation, and is also colour-coded using the standard colors of the player powers.
The point to take from this is the following one: regardless of whether you have a single generic special infantry unit (US Generic, UK Generic, USSR Generic, German Generic and Japanese Generic) or five different nationally-unique special infantry units (US Marines, UK Commandos, USSR Guards, German Waffen SS and Japanese SNLF), you still need five sculpts or icons that are distinct from each other (even if only by colour). Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to tell which special infantry unit belongs to which country, unless you go purely by the context of territories which are 100% under one power’s control. The old generic-design light grey AAA unit from the older A&A games worked that way: such a unit, located in (let’s say) a 100% Soviet-controlled territory, could only be interpreted as being a Soviet AAA gun. The special infantry unit we’re talking about, however, is a mobile unit that can make combat moves into enemy-held territories that might conceivably contain enemy special infantry units – at which point telling them apart could get very messy. It’s much cleaner and more practical to give these special infantry units a distinct appearance of some sort. You’re therefore not simplifying anything by restricting yourself to a generic unit rather than having nationally-unique ones because, one way or the other, you need to have five distinguishable sculpts or icons. So it’s a completely even draw between one option or the other.
Now for the issue of crowding.
It’s been argued that the Global 1940 map – whether as a physical board or as an electronic map – doesn’t have the space to accommodate a whole bunch of special infantry units (five if we limit them to the US, the UK, the USSR, Germany and Japan, and eight if we also give such units to Italy, ANZAC and France), and therefore that we need to use a generic unit to prevent crowding. That argument, however, disregards the fact that, no matter whether the special infantry units are generic or nationally-unique, each nation only uses one type, not five (or eight) types. If, let’s say, we give the US a generic special infantry unit, what will it look like on the map in a US-controlled territory? It will look like one sculpt (or icon). Now let’s say that we give the US a nationally-unique special infantry unit. What will it look like on the map in a US-controlled territory? It will look like one sculpt (or icon). So it’s one versus one, and therefore you’re no better off or worse off regardless of which option you use. And regardless of the option used, you will only ever have a maximum of two special infantry unit types in any given contested territory: the attacker’s and the defender’s. You’ll have two if the special infantry units are generic, and you’ll have two if the special infantry units are nationally-unique. Once again, you’re not making any gains one way or the other.
The one single element which does involve a greater degree of complication when we use nationally-unique special infantry units, as opposed to generic ones, is that we’re dealing with five (or potentially eight) different sets of costs and combat values and special abilities. But here again, keep in mind that each individual player doesn’t have to keep track with five (or potentially eight) different sets of unit characteristics. He only has to keep one set of characteristics in mind at all times: those of his own special infantry unit. He can ignore the others unless he’s about to go into combat against an enemy force that contains an enemy special infantry unit, in which case its combat characteristics can simply be looked up in a table. And he can completely ignore the costs and special movement abilities of the special infantry units of the other powers because it’s not his responsibility to purchase or move them.
I’ve never used TripleA, so I don’t know if the coding of five (or eight) special infantry units poses any difficulties as opposed to the coding of one. My guess – and it’s only a guess – is that it might be easier to code these as five (or eight) separate unit types, rather than as one unit type that has five (or eight) sets of special characteristics depending on the context. But as far as the physical board game goes, all that would presumably be required would be a table for the special infantry unit giving its characteristics for each power.
What I’ve basically been arguing above is that, as far as I can tell, having five (or potentially eight) nationally-unique special infantry units doesn’t in most respects appear to be any more complicated than having a single generic special infantry unit. Since both options appear to stack up evenly against each other in terms of simplicity and practicality, we can therefore consider the question of how these options stack up against each other in other ways.
As the debates of the last couple of weeks have shown, the generic option actually creates a host of problems in terms of historical accuracy, inter-nation consistency, unit purchase attractiveness, naming conventions and so forth. I won’t repeat all the arguments of those debates (because that would take too long, and because you can read them in detail by clicking back through the thread), but basically the problem is twofold. If on the one hand we try to create a purely generic unit that could plausibly apply to any nation, we tend to end up with unit that has a vague name and weak abilities. If on the other hand we try to create a unit that’s more specific in its abilities (say, a Marine), then we end up with a unit whose capabilities can’t be well reconciled with the actual WWII use of special infantry in all countries (say, the Waffen SS). And if we try to fix the latter problem by introducing unit differentiation, then we end up with a unit that isn’t generic after all…which is the very thing that we’ve supposedly been trying to avoid in the first place. Pretty much all of those contradictions and inaccuracies disappear, however, if we simply give each nation its own distinctive type of special infantry. And as a bonus, we get units whose names are not only more interesting than “generic elite infantry” but also convey a clearer idea of just what kind of special troops we’re dealing with (assuming that their abilities are modeled on those of the actual units that were used historically in WWII).
