From Europan Methods of Warfare
"The Imperial School of Small-Scale Warfare"
From an infantry perspective, the Imperial school revolves around the destructive capacity of the lancer, explaining the proportionately larger number of lancers in the Imperial army. The smallest autonomous unit of the Imperial school is the fireteam of eight, which revolves around a core of two lancers: one wielding an anti-vehicle lance, and another wielding an anti-infantry mortar lance. Supporting these lancers are typically two support engineers to supply the lancers, three shocktroopers to provide covering fire and close-range flamethrower defense, and a sniper or a scout to sight for the lancers.
Perhaps the signature maneuver of the fireteam is the "Iron Fist," devised in the urban Battle of Volgo. In this, the shocktroopers provide suppressive fire against the enemy, forcing them to take cover. This allows the lancers to aim and obliterate the cover and the people behind it.
While the fireteam's destructive power and continual offensive ability makes it a force to be reckoned it, its primary drawbacks are its lack of mobility and its vulnerability to being flanked. The former is addressed largely by the size of the Imperial army: While one fireteam may not be particularly mobile, a dozen fireteams on the field at once can push forward surprisingly fast. To mitigate the vulnerability of being flanked, typically an engineer and a stormtrooper are assigned to pay careful watch to the flanks and rear.
The Imperial school has also been criticized for its lack of efficient scouting. Scouting parties make up a separate group, and are often dispatched in advance of the main force to observe the enemy and perform initial strikes. In the midst of battle, however, scouting parties start to lack cohesion and scatter the scouts about, providing inefficient or insufficient scouting during the course of the battle. It has been suggested that Gallian victory over Imperial numbers has been in part due to the organized, efficient mode of scouting that the Gallian school promotes.
Fireteams are not autonomous forces. They are almost always backed up by armor support, i.e. tanks. While the lancer may be the center of the fireteam, the center of the Imperial army is the tank, and fireteams exist largely to protect the tank and to accomplish objectives that could not otherwise be done with the tank.
In terms of infantry weaponry, the Imperial school emphasizes ruggedness, reliability, and power. The individual accuracy and range of the weapon is subordinated to the amount of gunfire done at a given time. Weapon size and weight tends to be medium-light to allow more ammunition to be carried, allowing the barrage to be sustained. The use of the 7.62mm cartridge is meant to inflict severe bleeding wounds through the tumbling and fragmentation of the bullet, as opposed to the "straight shock" of Gallian and Atlantic cartridges.