China taking of Chungking

[Marshall]

I am playing a PBEM game against a most worthy opponent.
Probably a skill level to much to handle, but!!! I succeeded in China somehow

But now the thing is, having surrounded Chungking, bombed the industry and the airbase to hell and back, the enemy has over 8100 AV in it,a stack of over 80 units.
And somehow it is growing in numbers of men, but he cannot assault my forces, as he is stuck in defense.
I am bombing it, and shelling it with over 14 units of artillery

but his number of men are actually growing!
how do I get this monster on its knees?

I have surrounded an enemy stack of 23 units north as well, and a force of 300.000 Chinese are adrift more south, almost surrounded as well.
In short he has no bases left to produce supply, but I have no clue how and how long it takes to bring such a force down!


any tips for the Emperor?

[Big B]

Why do you assume he cannot counter-attack? With 8100 AV he certainly could attack with some or all of that.

The reason he is actually growing is because he receives replacements there, reinforcements there, rebuilt units there, as well as Daily Supply.

The only way to take it down is to Deliberate or Shock attack it and take the hex.

[Lokasenna]

I've done this twice. Once against a human, once against AI. What you need to do is close all hex sides. Use some Armored Car units to suicide shock across the river, but when you do so make damn sure that all of your other units are in Reserve mode or you'll be handed a nasty surprise in the form of several destroyed artillery units due to poor shock attack odds. The poor armored cars will just have to die for the greater good.

What you need to do then is fly hundreds of thousands of bombing sorties. Make sure you don't get CAP trapped by keeping Recon up on the place, and bombing the airfield periodically. This is at the beginning... Start your bombing of TROOPS (yes, TROOPS) to disrupt them, fatigue them, demoralize them, and possibly burn supply if they shoot their AA at you. Slowly decrease your bombing altitude until you are within the AA ceiling (you can also just look it up in the database), to be sure that they fire at your. The goal here is to burn up their organic supplies by forcing them to shoot at your planes - those bullets are then not used to shoot your troops. You'll lose planes, but not that many.

At the same time, you need to be amassing your own mega-army. This is no small task. You will need at least 10,000 AV there, and just about every tank you can get your hands on. If you're playing Scen 2 or its derivatives, send the Guards Tank Division. Actually, you should send every combat unit you can spare. Every single one will be 90+ Exp by the time you take Chungking, which is worth it later while defending. Then, start attacking. Don't be frightened - your first attacks will be very bloody, for you and more importantly for him. What you need to be focusing on is the drop in forts. Once forts are lower, your bombing attacks on troops will begin to cause hundreds (or thousands) of casualties. His combat power will begin dropping even faster. Make sure you cycle your divisions out, and split them into 1/3's during the recovery phase (recombining and re-splitting often). Always attack with as much of your army as possible (I only ever left 1-2 divisions out of any attack).

Once forts are lower, you will also need to bomb the airfield more often. This seems counterintuitive, but you don't want a single increase in forts here from no bombing of the airfield. What I did was to use a 31-plane unit of Kates (the Tateyama unit?) to bomb the airfield daily while my IJAAF 2E bombers hit the troops.

Don't be too overzealous in cleaning up his surrounded troops - once you kill them, they will respawn in 30 days at Chungking. It's better to let them wither, and kill them later. Leave just enough of your own in place to keep them bottled up, and send the rest to the capital.


Lastly, your supplies in Tokyo look low, Marshall-san [X(].

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Big B

Why do you assume he cannot counter-attack? With 8100 AV he certainly could attack with some or all of that.

The reason he is actually growing is because he receives replacements there, reinforcements there, rebuilt units there, as well as Daily Supply.

The only way to take it down is to Deliberate or Shock attack it and take the hex.

Don't Shock attack, you'll regret it.


Respawning units have poor Exp and Morale. I think 25/25? They won't do much. The Chinese attacking is actually the best thing that could happen for Marshall. They would almost certainly not succeed in routing the superior Japanese forces (even 4000 AV of Japanese would easily hold them off), and wreck their units in the process, AND burn lots of supply in the attack. The daily supply in Chungking, assuming no industry is operable, is only about 600. That is nowhere near enough to feed a stack of this size. He can fly supply in from Ledo, and there isn't much you can do about that, other than bombing the AF at Ledo if/when you can.


Oh, another thing - make sure you have enough HQ support in the hex for your attacking army. It affects your adjusted AV if you don't have sufficient support.

[Big B]

I agree mostly, I just didn't want the OP to think that he was somehow immune to counter attack against that much AV

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: Big B

Why do you assume he cannot counter-attack? With 8100 AV he certainly could attack with some or all of that.

The reason he is actually growing is because he receives replacements there, reinforcements there, rebuilt units there, as well as Daily Supply.

The only way to take it down is to Deliberate or Shock attack it and take the hex.

Don't Shock attack, you'll regret it.


Respawning units have poor Exp and Morale. I think 25/25? They won't do much. The Chinese attacking is actually the best thing that could happen for Marshall. They would almost certainly not succeed in routing the superior Japanese forces (even 4000 AV of Japanese would easily hold them off), and wreck their units in the process, AND burn lots of supply in the attack. The daily supply in Chungking, assuming no industry is operable, is only about 600. That is nowhere near enough to feed a stack of this size. He can fly supply in from Ledo, and there isn't much you can do about that, other than bombing the AF at Ledo if/when you can.


Oh, another thing - make sure you have enough HQ support in the hex for your attacking army. It affects your adjusted AV if you don't have sufficient support.

[Marshall]

I do not think he has supply going, as he doesn't attack, my stack is strong enough and veteran in experience to hold an attack off.
Is that 600 a turn supply even without the industry in Chungking? I bombed all industry into smoke.

if he is flying in supplies from Ledo, then it cannot be enough to hold such a stack I am sure.
so a suicide armor assault would achieve what goal? it doesn't make him weaker I think.

I bombed the airfield to oblivion and keep at it every turn to get supply hits.

can I actually starve the stack out, without attacking it?
I have over 300.000 men surrounded south of Kweiyang now, I do plan to eliminate them all, for the VP's.

So bombing them and using artillery only will not get the stack down to 3 or 4000 AV< to mop it up easy?

why does the base get 600 a turn, as the Burma road is closed.

[Marshall]

supplies in Tokyo are up to speed, as I just hogged up a shipload at that time.
also I distribute my supplies over all of japan, due to industry expansion and airframe expansion for research
i do not like to keep 400.000 in one base only
somehow i just like it spread out more

[Yaab]

ORIGINAL: Marshall

I do not think he has supply going, as he doesn't attack, my stack is strong enough and veteran in experience to hold an attack off.
Is that 600 a turn supply even without the industry in Chungking? I bombed all industry into smoke.

if he is flying in supplies from Ledo, then it cannot be enough to hold such a stack I am sure.
so a suicide armor assault would achieve what goal? it doesn't make him weaker I think.

I bombed the airfield to oblivion and keep at it every turn to get supply hits.

can I actually starve the stack out, without attacking it?
I have over 300.000 men surrounded south of Kweiyang now, I do plan to eliminate them all, for the VP's.

So bombing them and using artillery only will not get the stack down to 3 or 4000 AV< to mop it up easy?

why does the base get 600 a turn, as the Burma road is closed.

Hasn't Sichuan been called the Heavens' Granary? KMT get some free rice from the Heavens every turn in Chungking. You cannot destroy it. You just have to take Chungking in order stop the rice from appearing. Also, I guess Dai Li and his Juntong placed some blocking detachments behind KMT lines to boost defenders morale. Samurai vs Blueshirts.

[GetAssista]

Bomb and bombard, nothing else you can do for quite some time. Get all available combat engineers there and DA once in a while to try bring forts down to rise bombarding efficiency. Their number is growing because of all the reviving LCUs I guess, but once those are all in place, you would see numbers dwindling back. 350 squads per month are still there, plus there wont be enough organic supply to feed the horde and get all replacements. Try to keep all other Chinese surrounded but alive, let them rot someplace else instead of reviving at Chungking.
If there were stacking limits, this horde will be dealt with so much easier.. oh well. On the bright side, look at it as your VP factory.

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna
Every single one will be 90+ Exp by the time you take Chungking, which is worth it later while defending.

Oh, and yes, training facility! =)

[GetAssista]

double post

[BBfanboy]

Marshall, you do not say if you are playing with or without stacking limits.
If you DO have S/L s in place, the mass he has at Chungking will cause any supply to instantly evaporate. That said, starvation takes a looooong time to have any significant effect if no combat is taking place. And of course you have to manage your own S/L issues.

Bombing and bombardment to disrupt the enemy followed by deliberate attacks to bring down the forts is the way to go. You need HEAVY artillery to get much effect on an UL location with high forts. Heavy means 152 mm or better. There are some very heavy artillery units in Kwantung Army - buy them out and bring them to the party. Tanks are also good at fort busting, but watch the disablement rate and rest them when they start to suffer. I am not too familiar with the IJA OOB, but if they do have some combat engineer units these should be committed to the initial attacks on forts and held back when recovery is needed.

I see you already have units in Chungking and on the three sides of the city that don't require a river crossing. Bring units in from the non-river side and you do not have to do any shock attacks.

[Lokasenna]

It looks like no stacking limits.


Suicide armored car assaults across the river serves the purpose of closing the hex side on his side: once you control it, he can't leave the city by that hex side. It means you don't have to keep units outside of Chungking in every direction to prevent his retreat. Press 'W' if you did not already know how to view hex side control. You want those units to all surrender when you take the city - which they inevitably will do. You don't want them running into the woods where you have to spend months harvesting their VPs. I said to use armored car companies because they are largely worthless in actual combat, and are the cheapest to rebuild after being destroyed. Only about 30 devices.

The 600 supply per day is no matter what. That plus any from Ledo (which could be more hundreds) are still not enough to feed the stack - you're right. However, his units will still have some supply from it. Keep bombing them to make that supply go away.

I didn't mention it, but somebody else did. Bombard with your ground troops every day as well to burn up his supplies.

ORIGINAL: Marshall

supplies in Tokyo are up to speed, as I just hogged up a shipload at that time.
also I distribute my supplies over all of japan, due to industry expansion and airframe expansion for research
i do not like to keep 400.000 in one base only
somehow i just like it spread out more

Understandable, but I asked because only 50000-some supplies at Tokyo threw up all kinds of red flags to me. It's still summer of 1942, but I don't think Tokyo ever even got close to 500K for me, and I pull 11k+ supplies to all industry centers for repairs as well as 100K stockpiles at a few other bases for convoys...


By the way, expect this siege to take the better part of a year. I think I began my last one around the same time as this, and I think I didn't capture until well into 1943 (April or May). You need to plan for that, and you need to ship in a few hundred thousand supply. It's an investment, and once you start you need to see it through to the end or else your huge supply expenditure will have been for nothing. You have to get all of the VPs or it's not worth it.

And of course, once you take Chengtu and Chungking, build them to maximum size to maximize the VP harvest for you. This isn't a bad idea at other bases with a *10 multiplier for you also, but the return is smaller than the hundreds that those 2 bases are worth.

[Marshall]

About the hex control
do I still need to charge the river sides?

[GetAssista]

ORIGINAL: Marshall
About the hex control
do I still need to charge the river sides?

Yes, all three of them

[Lokasenna]

And you've got some forces in the north that you don't need in place anymore, given that certain hex sides are closed.

[RogerJNeilson]

Some people might question the ethics of suicide crossings of hexes by armoured car units of course....

Just saying.....

Roger

[Marshall]

got it, them mass troops, bombard with planes and arty.
after a that attack in phases until he has no supply at all and disorganization is high, resulting in a ineffective force, that will drop like flies.

this will be a monster task for many months, but then, if i have China conquered and eliminated from the war, i can use all these divisions in other areas [:D]

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Roger Neilson 3

Some people might question the ethics of suicide crossings of hexes by armoured car units of course....

Just saying.....

Roger

Ho-hum.

[1EyedJacks]

Consider leaving a route open in the clear hex to the NW for the Chinese to run. I think they fight harder when cornered. Give them an out while attacking with deliberate attacks and bombing the airfield to force any magic supplies to be spent on infrastructure. When you finally take the base, follow and attack them while they have no supplies. In that open hex they'll be slaughtered by your bombers...

[Lokasenna]

Chungking is also "open" terrain.

Unless someone can show me a post from a dev or something that says otherwise, I think it's just Forum Gospel that troops fight harder when cornered.