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In-game, a conscript unit represents an infantry division with lower firepower and fewer personnel.
Soviet infantry divisions were more numerous but weaker as a result. Furthermore, Italy used a binary system (two battalions per division instead of the standard three). Still, "conscript" remains an incorrect term.
Yet, in the game, conscripts are simply superior to regular infantry, which is obviously unhistorical.
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In Domination 1914 No Man's Land, there is a unit called a conscript. It can be built only by the Russian czarists and by the Bolsheviks at war against the czarists. It costs 2 PUs, attacks on a 0, defends on a 1. It can receive artillery support for attack. I took this exact unit verbatim and added it to Flames and Steel, except now its cost is 0 PUs and 1 MP. Only the Soviet Union, Italy, and China can build this unit.
This is not the only inspiration I've drawn from NML. Techs like industry, working women, and propaganda were inspired from that map.
In any case, and to return to your point: I will grant that the majority of men who served in WWII infantry forces were conscripted. According to Merriam Webster, anyone conscripted into a military fits the definition of a conscript. Therefore, I will grant that "conscript" is not the best word for this unit, because it could also be accurately applied to normal infantry. If anyone has a better idea for a label, I'm open to suggestions.
Also, I'm not sure if the German bodenständige Divisionen would fit into your idea of "conscripts" (guess not but just checking)
Historically this would be justified. These "static divisions" were less well-armed and less combat-effective than normal German infantry. Also, they often consisted of old men, or of conscripts from occupied territories. Germany has a tech called "crush communism," which allows it to collect MPs from occupied Soviet territories. (I think there's a ceiling of 5 MPs per turn.)
You could argue that instead of the MPs, Germany could get free conscripts. This would be more accurate and would give the game a better flavor. The main obstacle I see is that this game has a lot of unit types already, with Germany being Exhibit A of that. As it is, Germany can buy two types of infantry, two additional types of mobile infantry, three types of artillery, four types of tanks, three types of fighters, and five types of bombers. Also trenches, aa guns, factories, and SPCs.
Allright. This makes me understand a bit more what a conscript is, so how it can be called.
Since this is an "English" game, the natural way to call such unit would be "home_guard".
Granted, the home guard never actually fought against other land units (beside Irish insurgents) because it was never shipped to fight Germany or Italy, nor Germany or Italy ever invaded the United Kingdom with land units. Granted, if the Germans did, the home guard would have fought.
However, calling this unit "home_guard" would be very strange if the primary case of that name would not actually exist: Britain being actually unable to buy conscripts. This could be fixed by making Britain able to buy conscripts but having the conscripts unable to be shipped: this should be somewhat realistic in representing the home_guard.
(Conscript as a name would be a particularly poor term to define something like the Home Guard as they were almost all volunteers!)
However, the Home Guard may actually be too low of a thing even to be the "conscript" unit: it was an unpaid (not sure) armed citizen militia, whereas I guess the conscripts are actual full time soldiers albeit poorly trained/equipped. The Home Guard is more like on par with the German Volkssturm, which I assume is something even below what the conscript unit is supposed to be and is not going to be represented as a unit.
Assuming that the conscripts are something better than the British Home Guard, and that you are not going to give Britain the conscript unit anyway, I guess the most relevant players of those you have mentioned is the Soviet Union.
However, I'm not sure what a conscript is meant to be in the Soviet Union. Is it meant to be the
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narodnoe_Opolcheniye
?If so, it can be called just "militia". However, in this case, only a very small part of the Soviet army should consist of "conscripts".
Asking Google AI "In 1941, what percentage of the Soviet infantry was given by the Narodnoe Opolcheniye?", the answer is
The Proportions by Divisional Breakdown
In the desperate months following the German invasion on June 22, 1941, the Soviet military underwent massive expansion to replace staggering casualties:
Regional Breakdown (Where they mattered most)
• By the end of 1941, the Red Army had deployed or was forming over 400–450 total rifle (infantry) divisions.
• Between July and October 1941, approximately 60 to 70 divisions of the Narodnoe Opolcheniye (or units built directly from volunteer militia frameworks) were formed across the USSR.
• Mathematically, this means the volunteer Opolcheniye frameworks provided roughly 13% to 15% of the total infantry divisions generated by the Soviet Union during the critical defense phases of 1941.The Opolcheniye was not evenly distributed; it was concentrated heavily in major industrial hubs where the regular military lines were breaking down:
Region / Battle Contribution & Impact
Transition to Regular Infantry
Moscow 12 to 16 divisions were quickly raised in July and autumn of 1941. During the darkest days of the Battle of Moscow, these militia units made up a massive chunk of the immediate front-line infantry defense, plugging gaps until Siberian regular reserves arrived.
Leningrad 10 to 18 divisions (alongside several independent machine-gun battalions) were mobilized. At the onset of the Siege of Leningrad, the Opolcheniye accounted for nearly one-third (approx. 30%) of the infantry forces actively holding the city's immediate defensive lines.
Other Hubs Major volunteer contingents were also raised to fight as localized infantry in Stalingrad, Kiev, Rostov, and Odessa.The reason an exact "militia percentage" remains fluid is that the Narodnoe Opolcheniye was quickly absorbed into standard metrics. Because they suffered horrific casualties—frequently losing upwards of 80–90% of their strength within weeks due to lack of heavy weapons and formal training—the surviving divisions were formally re-numbered and converted into regular Red Army Rifle Divisions by the late autumn of 1941.
The Soviet union did not generally have scarcity of infantry equipment, but rather a tendency not to train their men for very long before sending them to the frontline (Any resemblance to actual Russian soldiers in Ukraine, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
). Especially with you mentioning a WW1 game, I wonder if here we are making some confusion with the WW1 Russian army (which was much poorer than the 1941 Soviet army and for which something like a sub-infantry unit would fit a lot more).Practically, if the Opolcheniye units are the conscripts, then the Soviet Union should have no conscripts at all from the spring of 1942 onwards if things go historically (as they would all be lost or absorbed into the regular infantry by then).
Alternatively, as said, conscripts could represent the Soviet tendency to train their men a lot less than others (say, the Americans) before sending them to fight. In this case, the unit could be called "replacement_infantry" or "untrained_infantry". (Of course, it is not totally untrained.)
