Red Guard (Generals 1)

The Red Guards were the basic infantry of the Chinese Army during the GLA Conflict.
==Background==
Chinese infantry combat doctrine dictates that riflemen should emphasize on accuracy and firepower, rather than rate of fire. As a result, aged but reliable bolt-action rifles,Command & Conquer: Generals manual. firing more powerful rounds, than M16A2s, carried by USA's Rangers or AK 47-type rifles, carried by GLA's Rebels, are kept as standard issues for basic PLA soldiers well into the 21st century. In game, those semi-automatic rifles can indeed deal more damage per shot than light infantry's standard assault rifles used by rival factions.
Their low rate of fire was countered by numbers, as they were trained in pairs at a Barracks or deployed in fireteams of eight with each Troop Crawler at the China War Factory. They could also garrison buildings and be trained to capture buildings at a Barracks. In groups of 5 or more, Red Guard would experience a "Horde Bonus" that greatly boosted morale and, by extension, fighting prowess.
General Shin Fai's Red Guards are replaced by Mini-Gunners, which are trained one at a time with a higher cost, but can attack aircraft and are more destructive in general.
==Abilities==
	Capture Building	Allows Red Guard to capture neutral and hostile structures.
==Upgrades==
	Red Guard Training	All Red Guards were built as veterans. 	Purchasable at the General's promotion menu by generals of any rank.
	Capture Building 	Trained Red Guards to capture enemy and neutral structures.	Purchasable any Barracks for a cost of $1000.
	Nationalism 	Red Guards' horde bonus was increased by 25%. 	Purchasable at the Propaganda Center for a cost of $2000.
==Game Unit==
===Strategy===
As they were so quick to train, they could be deployed in sufficient numbers to overwhelm enemy infantry by attrition, particularly early in a conflict. The Red Guard Training process could give them an additional edge over enemy infantry. They were particularly effective against GLA Terrorist rushes, as Chinese generals would not be able to have a sufficiently effective counter against them until they had established a War Factory.
Red Guard could also be used to cheaply give a horde bonus to Tank Hunters or Battlemasters by keeping them together in large squads. This made it more difficult for the enemy to break the bonus or target just the Tank Hunters. Care had to be taken to ensure that the faster Red Guard did not separate from the Tank Hunters while moving or fighting. In sufficient numbers with the horde effect they were surprisingly fast at taking down structures, making them a cheap alternative to destroying buildings if no tank hunters are on hand.
When playing as General Kwai, it is more cost effective to train them from the War Factory via transports rather than from the barracks, both due to the higher cost of infantry and the lower cost of his vehicles (including the pre-loaded Troop Crawlers).
Being China's basic infantry, the Red Guard were capable of being upgraded with the proper equipment to capture buildings. While China's elite operatives were also capable of capturing buildings, the Red Guard could do so much earlier in conflicts, and because they were trained in pairs, could also capture far more buildings at once. This also had the added bonus of making the capturing process harder to interrupt, as most weapons would have to kill twice the amount of infantry to halt it.
===Counters===
Individually, Red Guard were a poor match for the infantry of other factions. As with all, they were easy prey for anti-infantry weapons such as the GLA Quad Cannon. Flash-bang grenades could easily dispatch Red Guards, as they often clumped together to generate Horde bonuses. Toxin and nuclear weaponry also took their toll on them, since Red Guards lacked any kind of biohazard protection. Like all other basic infantry (excluding their elite counterparts), they could not target aircraft, and gunships such as the American Comanche could cut down even hordes of Red Guards if not dealt with.
==Quotes==
===Cut quotes===
==Trivia==
* The term 'Red Guard (红卫兵)' originated during the Chinese Cultural Revolution in the 1960s (borrowed from Russian Bolsheviks, whose Red Guard existed in 1917 before being supplanted by a professional Red Army). The real-life Red Guards were groups of radical students organized by Mao Zedong in an attempt to keep the Communist Revolution alive, but were disbanded for the trouble they're instigating. In the Chinese context, the term 'Red Guards' were not related to Chinese armed forces in any way, and therefore would not be deployed in such conflicts.
**Red Guard's appearance is consistent with a Chinese soldier from the Cultural Revolution to early 1980s wearing the then much-loved (by the enlisted) rankless Type 65 uniform, although it's more likely they would've worn Type 55 uniforms minus rank insignia since they were not regular PLA combatants in real life.
*Despite the game's official manual mentioned Red Guards are stated to use bolt action rifles, aligned with them firing their weapons only in single shots in game, they were shown to be rather armed with the Chinese variant of the AK rifles as evident by the design of the front sights in the unit icon, while the in-game model sports a short magazine and a bayonet with its firing rate that is rather fast for a bolt-action rifle, hints that they are rather issued with the Chinese variant SKS rifles.
*The Red Guard was planned to have an additional ability to stab hostile infantry with their rifle bayonets. Although it wasn't successfully implemented in the game, their weapon still carries a bayonet model.
*Sounds within Generals' audio archives prove that Red Guards could be upgraded with Stun Bullets, Functioning similarly to the flash-bang grenades deployed by Rangers and cut Tranquilizer darts used by the GLA Rebels, they would have incapacitated hostile infantry. Inadvertently, the stun bullets were removed at the same time of weeding out the POW logic.
*Unused unit quotes in the game files suggests some kind of protection suits similar to the American Chemical Suits were planned for the Infantry General, and in fact there's commented out code which would add the Chemical Suits upgrade to Infantry General's Propaganda Center. In the end, it was scrapped.
*Nuclear General Tao was supposed to have his own version of the Red Guard called the Nuclear Red Guard, which is armed with a rocket launcher firing tactical nuclear rockets similar to the Tank Hunter (how they would have differed from each other is unknown), but it was scrapped for unknown reasons. Unlike the Tank Hunter and Nuke Cannon variants, however, no cameo exists within the game files for this unit.
*Red Guard's concept art depicts they are oddly armed with a MG 42 machinegun and M1911 pistols.
*"Conscripts" were the likely predecessors of the Red Guard unit. While only a cameo picture (as shown in gallery) and incomplete model are available inside General's files, the Conscript looked much more modern and similar in appearance to actual PLA ground infantry.
**Ironically, the cameo image of 'conscripts' is taken from a Taiwanese military exercise, while doubly ironically, Taiwan actually enforced conscription whereas mainland China didn't for very long.
==Gallery==
Generals Red Guard Parade.jpg|Red Guard parade in Beijing during The Dragon Awakes
WEB CHEMIN 5171 1259232241.jpg|Concept art
GensBayonet.png|Red Guard bayonet icon
CNCG Conscript Cameo.png|The original Conscript cameo
GensZHConscript.png|The original Conscript model
Gen1 Red Guard German Icons.jpg|Final in-game icon
==See also== 
*Mini-Gunner, Shin Fai variant
* Ranger, USA counterpart
*Rebel, GLA counterpart
==References==
Category:Generals 1 infantry