War Footing's beginnings as a board game suggested using templates as a way of forming units rather than a free-for-all. As the game progressed, this became a good way to balance the game and prevent some of the more outlandish and unrealistic strategies, while still giving players meaningful options.
Ground units: the infantry core
The most common unit size is the battalion — most scenarios start the player with two to four of them. In War Footing, an infantry battalion is 500 soldiers, and a brigade is 3,000, with these numbers varying for armor and mechanized units. Infantry is meant to be the backbone of most forces, with solid manpower to hold ground, some IFVs, and attached artillery as well.
Mechanized units shift the balance heavily toward IFVs and also add a small armored component. For armored units, I added a company size — in addition to battalion and brigade — since acquiring a full battalion of tanks could be quite expensive, but I still wanted armor to be accessible early on.
Artillery and fire support
There are two dedicated artillery templates: the fire support battalion and the artillery battery. Both focus heavily on artillery pieces and exist to give players a way to invest in indirect fire without that capability being buried inside a combined-arms template.
The extremes: special operations and garrison
The last two ground templates sit at opposite ends of the spectrum. Special Operations companies require their own training facility to build, but they boost the effectiveness of troops around them and can provide intelligence reports on the sectors they're operating in. Garrison battalions are 500 manpower, but carry less equipment and lower readiness than regular infantry. They're cheap to stand up, but won't hold ground as well.
Air units
Air units are divided into two types: fixed wing and helicopter. Helicopter units are deployed to sectors and function more like a standard ground unit, while fixed-wing air units remain in the rear echelon — not deployed to a sector — and can cover the entire battlefield for air-to-air missions, or be assigned to a specific sector for ground support. Air defense units can also be deployed to sectors to defend against local attacks.
The final unit type is logistics — which we'll cover in detail next time!
Filed under: War Footing · dev blog · 16 Jun 2026