The Good The Bad & The Indifferent

[witpqs]

"it'll disappear completely in a week or so."

Looks invisible already!

[Crackaces]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

"it'll disappear completely in a week or so."

Looks invisible already!

I thInk he meant the hex to the south ?

[Canoerebel]

Yeah, I emplaced a misdirected circle, thus rendering my colorful diagram misleading.

The rapidly diminishing IJ stack is at Hengyang.

[CaptBeefheart]

Good luck on the China campaign.

I once had an interesting layover in Changsha on the way to Bangkok. When the missus and I checked in at the China Eastern counter in Korea, they told us at Changsha we would have to deplane, get our bags, go through Customs and re-check our bags, all within 45 minutes. It didn't help that our bags came out almost last on the belt and there were about 15 Chinese gals ahead of us in the single Customs line pushing carts overloaded with shopping bags. I wouldn't even have known the city if it weren't for this game. "WITP-AE: Providing geography lessons to grognards since 2009."

Cheers,
CC

[Canoerebel]

Early this year, I read Peter Hessler's River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. It was given to me by a friend who speaks Chinese, went to grad school in Taiwan, and married a Chinese girl. (In fact, he presented the book to me at Bray Fields in the Cohutta Wilderness Area, our lunch stop during a lengthy hike on a cold and windy day in late December, as it happened to be my birthday.)

I enjoyed the book a lot - Hessler is a fine writer. I doubt I'll ever travel in China - heck, there's a good chance I'll never leave the USA at this point - but AE is indeed a magnificent geography lesson.

And with reference to Korea, as background music at work, I often go to YouTube and click on a link to the Seoul Symphony Orchestra's presentation of Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony. It's a particularly fine performance, IMO. The conductor knows what he's doing and apparently doesn't think the show is all about him, a trait that is becoming more common among conductors these days. He just does his job and does it well.

[Canoerebel]

11/27/44

For the next six or seven days, Death Star will be in the open. John is following its journey and has a chance to craft a strike if he's so inclined. On the one hand, he'd definitely prefer to tangle with my carriers out in the open, away from my big bases. On the other hand, he's shown a marked reluctance to engage to this point. So I'm watching but not convinced that he'll do anything. Instead of focusing on DS, he may be focusing on Coastal China, on the possibility that he can hit hard there now that DS is far away.

[Canoerebel]

11/27/44

[jwolf]

Why do you want to risk the shock attack at Changsha when you can cross the river safely to the SW of the city? Are you in that much of a hurry? [&:]

[Canoerebel]

I want to close that hex side.

If John had posted a large army at Changsha so that reducing it would take a long time, my plan was to leave several units there while keeping the rest of the offensive. But to do that, I didn't want to have any concerns about John moving further into the interior, creating consternation or problems.

[AcePylut]

I think There's a ratio out there somewhere, where you won't generate a shock attack crossing a river if there is already a "multiplier" higher of AV in the hex. So you could march SE, then into Changsa with the bulk of your army, and only cross over 20AV or so.

I forgot the numbers, but as a hypothetical example, if you have 1000 AV in the hex, then have a 200AV unit cross a river into that hex, it won't generate a shock attack.

At least I think that's how it works (exact numbers notwithstanding).

[Canoerebel]

I know there's a ratio where you can cross a river and enter a hex and not trigger a shock attack. But, as far as I know, that only applies when you're crossing through a hexside you already control.

If you cross an enemy-controlled hexside, I think you always trigger the shock attack.

I could be wrong though.

[Canoerebel]

11/27/44

The situation at Changsha and why I've ordered a shock attack across the hex's west side:

[Lowpe]

Are you done with invasions?

I see you blocked the railroad with a chinese straggler...well done.

There isn't a lot of native supply in Manchuko, Korea and China. I bet it isn't heavily protected with AA. No VP, but the impact of your offensive will greatly increase if the Japanese are fighting at 25% strength. Not to mention curtailing enemy air activity.

The River is navigable a long way, mines and cd guns don't work very well, if at all on the river.

Where did the 2nd Tank Division slink off to? Or did it get destroyed?

[witpqs]

The way the river-crossing no-shock attack thingy is supposed to work is if you have AV which already crossed through the same hex side >1/3 (or >=1/3?) of your opponents AV there will be no river-crossing shock attack.

There might have been problems with the implementation initially, but the intention is you only count your AV that crossed the same way already.

[AcePylut]

Coolio - thanks for clearing that up witpqs. I couldn't remember the finer details (obviously)

[Canoerebel]

2nd Tank Division got mauled in successive defeats and retreats, so shouldn't be a factor in the game for a long time.

I'm not sure whether I'm done with large-scale invasions or not. For the next month or two, I'm going to concentrate on China and strategic bombing. If that doesn't put me on a trajectory to achieve 2:1 within a reasonable time, I'll consider invading Korea or Hokkaido or Java. Troops are prepped for all three.

[jwolf]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

The way the river-crossing no-shock attack thingy is supposed to work is if you have AV which already crossed through the same hex side >1/3 (or >=1/3?) of your opponents AV there will be no river-crossing shock attack.

There might have been problems with the implementation initially, but the intention is you only count your AV that crossed the same way already.

Once a unit is in the hex, I doubt the code keeps track of where it came from, but I admit that is speculation on my part. But you definitely trigger a shock attack if you cross a river hexside that you didn't cross before. Once the hexside is crossed, other units can come in without a shock via the 1/3 rule, but I don't know if that counts all AV in the target hex or only the portion that came in the same way. I suspect the former simply because the latter would be a huge pain to code for what seems a marginal benefit in gameplay or realism. Granted this is all speculation on my part.

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

2nd Tank Division got mauled in successive defeats and retreats, so shouldn't be a factor in the game for a long time.

You are wrong here. The 2nd Tank Div has lots of different style devices in their TOE and can rebuild extremely fast given supplies needed to do so. Granted it won't be the anchor of the defense anymore, but it really can provide a lot of AT capability very quickly.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: jwolf

ORIGINAL: witpqs

The way the river-crossing no-shock attack thingy is supposed to work is if you have AV which already crossed through the same hex side >1/3 (or >=1/3?) of your opponents AV there will be no river-crossing shock attack.

There might have been problems with the implementation initially, but the intention is you only count your AV that crossed the same way already.

Once a unit is in the hex, I doubt the code keeps track of where it came from, but I admit that is speculation on my part. But you definitely trigger a shock attack if you cross a river hexside that you didn't cross before. Once the hexside is crossed, other units can come in without a shock via the 1/3 rule, but I don't know if that counts all AV in the target hex or only the portion that came in the same way. I suspect the former simply because the latter would be a huge pain to code for what seems a marginal benefit in gameplay or realism. Granted this is all speculation on my part.

That came from the programmer who did it (Michael). Certainly it's possible that it got implemented a little more simply, but that's what he said at the time. I've never been enough interested in that detail to either test it or try and verify it from game observations.

[Canoerebel]

Gents, my army crossing the Japanese held hexside did NOT trigger an auto-shock attack. The stack entered the hex without any combat occurring at all.

I take this to mean that as long as the Allies have sufficient units in a contested hex to avoid triggering a shock attack when newly arriving units cross a river, it doesn't matter if the hexside being crossed is friendly- or enemy-controlled.

This is so contrary to my notions of how this worked that I'm likely to forget it soon.