But you said
for the most of what I'm working on, I have the album artist set.
Then you don't need iTunes compilation tag. It has no effect on grouping.
Each track's year value has no effect on your album grouping as well because you don't have the criterion in your grouping setting.
Thanks redwing (and Anti and scampbll.) You took away the easy part of my project. Instead of selecting 200+ 'greatest hits' albums and tagging them as compilations, I now have to find the release year for 760 tracks. Well, my wife will be happy that I'm upstairs "working" and not bothering her.