Special Forces
Flying Pig
Flying Pig
In the real world, most armies have elite units. This guide is on how to get the best out of them, and to make them worthy of the illustrious real-world parachute units – Delta Force, the SAS and a host of others. As Sun Tzu put it: “in my army I have the regular men and those who are extraordinary, without them I cannot win”: properly used elite units are a valuable asset to a country’s military.
We first need to understand what constitutes a Special Forces unit. It must be able to rely on itself, so units which cannot gain Medic and March promotions are no good. It must be better than other units and have some special capacity. From this we can see units which we can use – the Paratrooper; which comes late in the game but is among the most unique units, and when promoted and employed properly is a great unit. It should be noted that Special Forces are not run-of-the-mill units: they need to be trained carefully - in a city with a Barracks, West Point, settled Officers, The Pentagon and then they need to be baptised in fire. Train your men well, then use them in small battles which you would trust to anyone, then move up the missions ladder until you have a hard-as-nails elite unit. Do not expect to have many of these.
Promotions
So, first I will talk about what is needed – a cadre of good soldiers. Taking the lead of real units, we can identify roles that Paratroopers might perform; advance guards (like the paratroopers who guarded the eastern flank of the D-Day assault), commandos (like those who raided Pegasus Bridge); a rapid reaction force (like the Parachute Regiment who saw action in the Falklands) and as a general purpose elite unit which is ready for anything (as the recent actions of the SAS have shown).
The Paratrooper is a decent unit to start with. It has strength 24 and the ability to drop five tiles; with a 33% chance of evading any enemy troops which may be in position to intercept it. This gives them the ability to fight basically anything, but they should watch out for Infantry if they are not prepared, as those men get +25% against them, or 25 – better than equal footing, without promotions or terrain.
So; if we take a look at our uses, what can we see developing? I will now describe some Paratrooper variants, and how they can be used in action. It should be noted that as in the real world Special Forces are elite; you need to train them well; bringing them from a military city (for example, one with a Heroic Epic, West Point, a Military Academy and a few settled Great Generals, with the Pentagon in one of your cities).
The Commando is a unit designed to get into a war zone, to cause crippling damage behind enemy lines, and then get out before they can be defeated. This reminds you of the actions of Special Air Service personnel before the First Gulf War and battles at the Bridges during the Normandy Invasion. He has Commando, letting him move along the enemy’s roads, Combat IV (by necessity), some kind of Medic promotion (I or maybe III if you have a Great General in command) and March, which means that the unit can move into enemy lands, fight skirmishes against the odds and get out without being slowed. Taking a Great General and Morale (admittedly quite an investment) means that they can move four tiles per turn on enemy roads - that's as fast as a Tank, and they have the initiative.
Another good use for your Paratroopers is as a reaction force – when you need men into an action at speed and then they need to fight. If you have March, Commando, Pinch, Ambush and Amphibious (the first is essential, the last desirable, then they descend in importance) and then Drill and Combat promotions, they will be able to move in to engage the enemy quickly and then to fight them, regardless of who they are.
You may also want them for specialist duties, like the US Green Berets which are experts in jungle fighting. Despite the lack of terrain-specific promotions (with the exception of Woodsman and Guerrilla) you can still, with full lines in the chosen terrain and Drill promotions, make skilled men for action in specific battles. For example, a hills unit would want Drill to counteract the enemy’s defensive bonuses, as well as Amphibious (there are a lot of rivers in the hills), while a forest/jungle (for reasons that are beyond me, the two are the same) soldier needs to have Medic and March lines, so that he can make ambushes and then escape, safe because the enemy are slower in the jungle than him, and to boost the medic properties of Woodsman III.
Missions
So, now that we have worked out the line up for our Special Forces men, how are we to employ them? Obviously, as with all military operations, it depends on which men you are sending in as to where they go and how they do it. There are some basic missions which work for most units:
To start out in action, move a group of Paratroopers with air support and recon five tiles from a Fort in your land, then mark that site. Either move on to attract the enemy, then pull back to the RV point and make a drop in with extra men, or attack while the aeroplanes deal with the enemy's crack divisions. This means that the troops can get experience points, letting you take promotions and then improve your men.
Using the para-drop function to move into a recently taken city, fortifying there and drawing the enemy while the main army moves out into a new action is a tactic which you can use to free up your men an also to keep the enemy off; they will take their old city over an attack on your army. Men on this mission will do well with Drill and Combat promotions to make them more durable, and probably Ambush to block tank attacks. You need either good intelligence or a very good unit for this; as you are basically acting as a magnet for the enemy to dry them up and destroy them.
The lowest-risk mission is to work as recon; you press into the attack with a brigade of Special Forces ahead of you, then pull out behind to join the army if a dangerous enemy shows his head, and if not kill anything in the way. A Paratrooper is not absolutely necessary for this task; you could use any well-promoted unit which has sufficient skill to do a recon. These missions are often done in the jungle, so Woodsman Paratroopers are often best for this job, but Guerrilla troopers do just as well because they have a Withdrawal Chance. The task should be done by a capable unit, since you can only pull out once before the unit is needed to fight, but not by a unit that you seriously object to losing.
The most heroic and difficult mission that you can order troops into is a full-scale invasion. So far, we have covered the two ‘support’ missions, where there is a fall-back point. From now on I will discuss actions which should be done with the finest men bearing the brunt of the action.
The simplest one of these is the Pegasus, where a paratrooper moves into enemy lands from an allied city with his para-drop, supported by a Spy to check that the area is clear and to remove the Fog of War, with a view to destroy enemy infrastructure. It is named after the Pegasus Bridge action, which you can read about in my Utrinque Paratus article, because that was the first and best operation by airborne soldiers to do this. Commando units, as described before, do best at this as the objective is to get in and then get out. There is a more difficult version of this, which is ‘take and hold’ – to take and burn the oil well, then to fortify on the source and then to deny the enemy it permanently, which needs Medic II at least (preferably III) and lots of Drill and Combat promotions. This method is brutal – chewing up a mass of troops to cripple them, but it only works as long as there is a man on the objective.
The more complex to run attack with the parachute is a full-scale airborne invasion. There are a million and one methods and principles of doing this, but a few come above all: that you need the best men that you can find as the battle is hugely against the odds (unless you can call in a nautical or aerial bombardment), that you must recon the area before you attack by Spies, Explorers or Aerial Forces to avoid, like one mission to Sierra Leone, dropping into a swamp or a gunfight , that you need to remove enemy air support first as 66% of your men will be killed if under aerial fire and that you need a city or fort near the enemy border to launch the mission. Finally, you can’t parachute into a city.
These missions can only be done over a maximum of five tiles of water, and so must be assisted by reconnaissance units to check on good landing sites and the enemy; air units that the enemy has must be removed quickly and spots where the enemy can marshal to beat you in a turn (you can’t drop then move) need to be avoided. It is important to remember that as a sole means of operation it is not considered tactically sound, because there are too many unknowns in the method, and so needs to be combined with other methods, for example parachuting in your SAS to attack the soldiers threatening to kill your sea-borne assault force or to move in to attack a city which has been left vulnerable by the enemy.
The circumstances of these missions need to be taken into account before one is launched. The invasion of Crete was done against weak defences after air power had been taken out and so was a strong army taking advantage of a weaker enemy before he could get stronger, and that is the way to do them: to attack something in a one-turn window of opportunity which would be gone if a full-scale attack was mounted.
The ideal attack is done on a two-tile island, with a city on one of those tiles, and a hill or forest on the other. Send a fleet with Missile Cruisers and Carriers to bombard the city and destroy enemy aeroplanes in the area, then land the ground troops and capture the stricken city before the enemy can react. This means that you can seize the enemy’s territory before he can assemble a fleet to get you and that you don’t need to risk the invasion on a sea crossing – if the fleet is destroyed, the mission can still go ahead.
So, in summary, a very powerful Paratrooper unit is worth keeping around. They can carry out missions, especially those which are difficult or impossible for other units, and they are incredibly versatile both in support roles and in spearheading an attack to crush the enemy: they can work on land or sea, and they have the advantage of surprise if properly employed regardless of what they do. As I said at the start, they are not easy to get hold of, but if you have a city suited to making them (which is a good strategy anyway) then you have the potential to be able to use advantages that nobody else has.
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