[Infinity] A Survey of the Generic Armies' Troop Types

Last updated on January 29. 2016 - I am really excited about Infinity--both the Corvus Belli's skirmish game and the upcoming Modiphius' RPG. For me, the miniatures are aesthetically pleasing and the setting is rather refreshing compared to other science fiction settings. I have been browsing the web to learn more about Infinity's background. This led me to the Human Sphere section on Corvus Belli Infinity's webpage where background for each of the 8 factions are given with a characteristic rating chart. There seems to be some discrepancy between these ratings with what is currently available for each faction. As someone who likes to survey and organize information, I decided to analyze and make comparisons between the 8 generic armies for the skirmish game.

Diversity and Availability of Troops

Method of the Survey

This is a survey of the troop types for the generic armies in Infinity, analyzed for the representation of troop diversity and availability. The data collected for this analysis comes from Infinity's Army Web Tool.

Click to view the chart at its actual size

Sections highlighted in yellow represents a troop that have no limit to their availability. Mercenaries were not included in the analysis. Achilles, Jeanne D'Arc, and Sun Tze each have 2 unit profiles listed on Infinity's Army Web Tool. Since you can field only one version of them within a game, they were counted only as one unique unit in these charts. One version of Sun Tze is listed as a medium infantry while the other version is listed as a heavy infantry. For the purpose of this analysis, I chose to list him as heavy infantry. Some of the units have two or more troops types listed under their ISC profiles. For example, Auxilia is listed as light infantry and its Auxbot is a Remote. For these unit profile I count them as just one troop type based on the Army Web Tool's troop type filter.

Diversity

As of January 21, 2016, this blog entry surveys 338 unique unit profiles within the Army Web Tool. Over 100 of these unit profiles are listed as light infantry troop types. Medium infantry, heavy infantry, and remote troop types are the next abundant troop types. These troop types each makes up approximately 50 of the unit profiles surveyed. Tohaa has no remotes. Skirmisher and warband troop types have similar number of unit profiles, approximately 30 each. Next to last are the TAGs with 20 unit profiles listed. PanOceania has no Warband profiles, while Ariadna has no TAG unit profiles. ALEPH and the Combined Army are the only armies to have any Special Units. 

Click to view the chart at its actual size

The number of unique unit profiles per army ranges from 22 to 49, with a mean of 42.25, median of 44, and mode of 44. Being the newer army, Tohaa has considerably less unique unit profiles compared to the other factions, skewing the mean to be lower. The chart above represents unit diversity within each of the 8 generic army based on troop types as percentages.

Availability

Out of the 338 unique unit profiles, only 15 of them have unlimited availability within the 8 generic armies. These units are either light infantry or warband troop type and is listed in the last section. Only the ALEPH generic army does not have a unit profile with unlimited availability. The total availability of limited troop types for the 8 generic armies ranges from 59 to 79, with a mean of 72.5 and a median of 73.5. Again, Tohaa being a newer faction skews the mean to be lower.

Click to view the chart at its actual size

The availability of limited troop types per faction is displayed in the above chart as percentages. The representation of limited troop types availability is fairly similar to the chart in the Diversity section that displays the percentage of Unique Troop Types per Faction.

Ranking Diversity and Availability between Armies

I decided on a rating method using the above data in order to make comparisons to both the Characteristic Rating charts found within Corvus Belli's Human Sphere section and between the generic armies. Ranking the representation of a specific troop type within their generic army is based on two ratings - one on diversity and the other on availability of the limited troop types. For each specific troop type, I compared their representation within their respective armies. The highest percentage representation for a specific troop type is used as the standard to compare the representation of the same specific troop type in other armies on a scale to 10.

For example, I compared TAGs representation within their respective armies. The highest percentage representation for TAG diversity in a generic army is within PanOceania at 17%. I arbitrarily rated TAG diversity in the PanOceania generic army to be 10 and used this as the standard to rate all other generic armies representation of TAG diversity. So looking at the Yu Jing generic army, TAGs make up about 4% of  its troop diversity. The ratings for TAG diversity in the Yu Jing generic army is calculated as (4/17)*10. Yu Jing's TAGs diversity rating is 2.6 compared to PanOceania rating of 10.

The two ratings for troop type representations are show in the two charts below. 

Click to view the chart at its actual size

Click to view the chart at its actual size

In the following subsections, I compare these observations with the characteristic ratings on Corvus Belli's website. After each generic army's name are two numbers. The first number is the rating of a specific troop type's representation within an army's troop diversity. The second number is the rating of a specific troop type's representation within an army's availability of limited troops.

Representation of Light Infantry in the Generic Armies

• Tohaa (10, 10)*
• Haqqislam (6.4, 7.7)*
• Ariadna (5.6, 5.3)*
• Yu Jing (5.1, 4.5)*
• Combined Army (4.5, 4.4)*
• ALEPH (3.8, 3.9)
• Nomads (3.9, 3.2)*
• PanOceania (3.6, 3.3) *

For comparison, Corvus Belli's Characteristic Rating of Light Infantry for each Faction:

• Tohaa (10)
• Haqqislam (5)
• Ariadna (5)
• Yu Jing (2)
• Combined Army (2)
• Nomads (2)
• Pan Oceania (1)
• ALEPH (0)

Except for ALEPH, the representation ratings compared to Corvus Belli's site is fairly similar. The only reason I can think of ALEPH getting a zero on Corvus Belli's Characteristic Rating Chart is that they don't have a Light Infantry with unlimited availability option (*). Light Infantry with unlimited availability for the other 7 Generic Armies are listed below:

• PanOceania - Fusiliers (LI)
• Yu Jing - Zanshi (LI), Keisotsu (LI)
• Ariadna - Line Kazaks (LI)
• Haqqislam - Ghulam (LI), Daylami (LI), Halqa (LI)
• Nomads - Alguaciles (LI), Moderators (LI),
• Combined Army - Morat Vanguard (LI)
• Tohaa - Kamael (LI)

Representation of Medium Infantry in the Generic Armies

• Nomads (10, 10)
• Combined Army (9.9, 8.5)
• ALEPH (8.6, 5.1)
• PanOceania (6.4, 7)
• Ariadna (6.8, 6.5)
• Haqqislam (5, 5)
• Tohaa (4, 4.2)
• Yu Jing (1.9, 2.3),  

For comparison, Corvus Belli's Characteristic Rating of Medium Infantry for each Faction:

• Combined Army (10)
• Nomads (8)
• ALEPH (6)
• PanOceania (4)
• Haqqislam (3)
• Tohaa (3)
• Yu Jing (2)
• Ariadna (0)

I am not sure why Middle Infantry for Ariadna is given a zero rating in Corvus Belli's Characteristic Rating. Representation of Middle Infantry in the Ariadna generic army rates to be in the middle of the pack.

Representation of Heavy Infantry in the Generic Armies

• Yu Jing (10, 10)
• PanOceania (8.9, 5.6)
• Ariadna (4.4, 4.8)
• Haqqislam (3, 2.7)
• Tohaa (3, 2.4)
• ALEPH (3.2, 2)
• Combined Army (2.7, 1.9)
• Nomads (1.5, 1.5)

For comparison, Corvus Belli's Characteristic Rating of Heavy Infantry for each Faction:

• Yu Jing (10)
• PanOceania (8)
• Ariadna (4)
• Tohaa (3)
• Haqqislam (2)
• ALEPH (2)
• Combined Army (1)
• Nomads (0)

Everything is placed in a similar order between the two lists. Only Tohaa and Haqqislam order in the lists are swapped. I assumed this small discrepancy may be due to Tohaa having ~45-55% less unit profiles compared to the other 7 generic armies,

Representation of Remotes in the Generic Armies

• ALEPH (9.5, 10)
• Nomads (10, 7.9)
• PanOceania (8.2, 8.4) 
• Combined Army (8, 7.4)
• Yu Jing (8.5, 5.3)
• Haqqislam (6,7, 3.9)
• Ariadna (1,1, 0.9)
• Tohaa (0, 0)  

For comparison, Corvus Belli's Characteristic Rating of Remotes for each Faction:

• ALEPH (10)
• Nomads (10)
• PanOceania (7)
• Yu Jing (7)
• Haqqislam (7)
• Combined Army (6)
• Ariadna (1)
• Tohaa (0)

Combined Army's rise could be the due to the emphasis of remotes and mechanized troops in the upcoming Onyx sectional army for the Combined Army faction.

Representation of Tactical Armored Gears in the Generic Armies

• PanOceania (10, 10)
• Nomads (5.5, 4.7)
• Combined Army (3.7, 2.8)
• Yu Jing (2.6, 2.7)
• Tohaa (2.7, 1.2)
• ALEPH (1.5, 1)
• Haqqislam (1.4, 1)
• Ariadna (0, 0)

For comparison, Corvus Belli's Characteristic Rating of TAGs for each Faction:

• PanOceania (10)
• Nomads (6)
• Combined Army (5)
• Tohaa (4)
• Yu Jing (2)
• ALEPH (1)
• Haqqislam (1)
• Ariadna (0)

Everything is placed in a similar order between the two lists. Yu Jing and Tohaa order in the list are swapped. As stated earlier, I assumed this small discrepancy may be due to Tohaa having ~45-55% less unit profiles compared to the other 7 generic armies. Corvus Belli's Characteristic rating for TAGs in Tohaa is closer in rating to Combined Army than Yu Jing. This might suggest there are plans for more TAGs in the future for Tohaa.

Representation of Skirmishers in the Generic Armies

• Ariadna (9.8, 10)
• Haqqislam (10, 6.6)
• Nomads (8,3, 7.1)
• Tohaa (6.7, 5)
• Yu Jing (6.4, 4.5)
• Combined Army (6, 4.7)
• ALEPH (5.4, 4.2)
• PanOceania (1.5, 1.7) 

Skirmishers were not specifically given a characteristic rating on the Human Sphere section.

Representation of Warbands in the Generic Armies

• Ariadna (10, 10)*
• ALEPH (7.3, 10)
• Combined Army (4.1, 5.5)*
• Haqqislam (4.6, 4.9)
• Tohaa (2.3, 7.1)
• Nomads (3.4, 4.7)*
• Yu Jing (1.1, 3.5)
• PanOceania (0, 0)

* - Warbands with unlimited availability for Generic Armies are listed below:

• Ariadna - Highlander Rifles (WB)
• Nomads - Die Morlock Gruppe (WB)
• Combined Army - Gakis (WB), Pretas (WB)

Warbands were not specifically given a characteristic rating on the Human Sphere section.

Summary

So what is the take home message I want people to get from this analysis? I don't think the analysis should or would play a major role on how you choose troops or pick an army, but I do hope it can give some people a different point of view or perspective on the armies. Unless there are no units or a very low representation of a specific troop type within a generic army, one can likely field an army that emphasizes the troop types that are less represented overall in that army. For example, even though Nomads have a lot less options than other armies for heavy infantry, you can still field a predominantly heavy infantry force for most standard skirmish games of Infinity.

As mentioned at the beginning, I like to survey and organize information. I did not expected this entry to be so long , but it was an interesting endeavor for me. If I have the time, I would also like to either do something similar for the sectorial armies, survey units by troop class or abilities, or continue with analyzing the above information. If you gotten this far or even skimmed through to the end, thanks for taking the time for checking this entry out!

Revisions

January 29, 2016 - Added Desperadoes into the data. Corrected data for Ariadna to take into consideration of availability of dog-warrior-like troops in the generic army. This update have subtle affects on Ariadna troop representation ratings, Skirmisher representation ratings, and Warband representation ratings. The placement of each generic army representation for each troop type have not changed