Small Scen VS AI

[tarkalak]

In this AAR I will fight a few small scenarios VS the AI.

And hopefully learn something.


Lessons Learned:

1. Sometimes Units sent to a contested hex in Strategic Mode via railroad will stop one hex short of the target and start unpacking. It seems that this happens when their last leg of movement ends one hex short of the target. Other then that Strategic move can and will end in a contested hex.
Link too begining of discussion.

2. Sometimes a unit ordered to move to a hex will take a completely different route and move to another hex.
This seems to happen when the unit was set to move to hex A, but then it was ordered to move to hex B. Sometimes it will show movement towards A but end up going to A.
Link too begining of discussion.

3. Static units under control of the AI can move.
2nd RTA follows my guys.

[tarkalak]

I will first play Scenarion 019 Battle of Burma as allies.

"The Burmese tea is an important strategic resourse for the British empire. It must be protected."

My plan is to try to defend the river crossings at Sittang Bridge and then at Pegu and finally Rangoon. Loosing Rangoon will give the AI enough points to win so I must prevent it.

[HMASAustralia]

I am not familiar with the scenario, but don't defend Pegu. Defend your first line and Rangoon but Pegu is clear terrain, no terrain bonus and easier targets for Japanese bombers. Can you give us some information on Aircraft numbers, reinforcements, unit quality, length of the scenario and whether there is stacking limits? I love small scenarios like this where its all shoestring and scraping together what ever you can get.
Good Luck!

[GetAssista]

You don't have to run with everything. Leave a couple worthless base forces behind so that the enemy spends a turn per hex to kick them out.

Also, don't place high hopes in Pegu. You don't have terrain defense bonus there and risk being stomped

[HansBolter]

I probably shouldn't be telling you this but in just about any scenario against the AI except the Ironman scenarios that have the game start with infiltrators in Burma, it is extremely easy to completely stymie the AI in Burma.


If you move as quickly as possible to assemble the 1st Burma Division in the hex NE of Moulmein the AI will not have brought enough strength to be able to make the river crossing. It will seek to flank the position. If you move just as quickly to get at least a brigade in each river hex extending NE from the blocking position, you can stop the AI dead in its tracks.

That "small unit waiting for nothing" is blocking the flank route into the Burma heartland.
It's a slow route but the AI will pursue it.

I typically don't leave more than a battalion in Moulmein as a speed bump.


In my current Ironman Nasty Ported to Babes scenario (#40), the AI started with infiltrators in Burma that prevented me from implementing what has become a stock defense in Burma.
I decided to slowly evacuate Burma with a fighting withdrawal. The AI went all the way to Imphal and Kohima, which made for a much more interesting game.
I was getting bored with stopping the AI cold in Burma game after game.

[tarkalak]

I already played several scenarios so I don't expect the AI to do anything smart.

In this scenario the Divisions cannot be combined.

The Jap units near Tavoy have dissapeared and some of them had move arrows pointing at Bangkok. So will see where they end up.

The really annoying thing is that Paoshan has a garison requirement, but I have no troops anywhere near there.

Oh, and I lost 5 of the AVG planes for 3 Oscars. I will get more conservative.

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: tarkalak

I already played several scenarios so I don't expect the AI to do anything smart.

In this scenario the Divisions cannot be combined.

The Jap units near Tavoy have dissapeared and some of them had move arrows pointing at Bangkok. So will see where they end up.

The really annoying thing is that Paoshan has a garison requirement, but I have no troops anywhere near there.

Oh, and I lost 5 of the AVG planes for 3 Oscars. I will get more conservative.

I'm not sure how it works in this scenario, but in campaign games when you upgrade the AVG to P40s the H81A3s go into the Chinese pools so it is a good idea not to use the AVG too aggressively until you upgrade them.

[tarkalak]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

I probably shouldn't be telling you this but in just about any scenario against the AI except the Ironman scenarios that have the game start with infiltrators in Burma, it is extremely easy to completely stymie the AI in Burma.

...

I already read that somewhere else, so no harm done.

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

I'm not sure how it works in this scenario, but in campaign games when you upgrade the AVG to P40s the H81A3s go into the Chinese pools so it is a good idea not to use the AVG too aggressively until you upgrade them.

In the scenario I have two AVG squadrons of 27 and one more comes 2 weeks later. I start with a total of 18 H81-A3s in pool and zero production. I don't think I have P-40s to upgrade to at all. I have divided the AVG pilots in best, good and training squadron.

The British get a 16 plane squadron of Buffaloes which can upgrade to Hurricanes and I get a squadron or two of Hurries later.

The good news is that the AI has mostly Nates at start and can upgrade only to Oscar I(abc). I think the H81 will outperform all of them. When I played the Jap side before I lost quite a lot of Oscars and then decided to limit myself to night bombing of Rangoon and CAP. The brits have very few bombers anyway.

[tarkalak]

A month later. I have managed to loose 18 H81 so I am out of replacements. I can upgrade them to P-40s, but they have a replacement rate of 5 per month, so I will have enough around the end of the scenario.

On the good side I now have Hurricanes who seem to perform similarly.

The AI has 5 Sentais of Sallies (27 or 31 planes), but I have not seen any of them. He has 1 Sentai of Anns who do come to play sometimes.

[HMASAustralia]

Your morale is low, and your adjusted AV is atrocious. I wouldn't counterattack unless you were sure no more Japanese would cross next turn.

[tarkalak]

ORIGINAL: HMASAustralia

I am not familiar with the scenario, but don't defend Pegu. Defend your first line and Rangoon but Pegu is clear terrain, no terrain bonus and easier targets for Japanese bombers. Can you give us some information on Aircraft numbers, reinforcements, unit quality, length of the scenario and whether there is stacking limits? I love small scenarios like this where its all shoestring and scraping together what ever you can get.
Good Luck!

The scenario ends in end of May I think.

1. Air
I get three squadrons of AVG with 27 planes each and about 20 replacement crafts. I can upgrade them to P-40 but these produce at 5 per month and have no starting pool, so I can as well forget them for most of the game.

The British and Indians start with one 16 plane squadron of Buffaloes, that can upgrade to Hurricanes. They also get 2 more squadrons of 16 later.

For bombers I have 30 Blenhaim IVs with no replacements and some Lysanders and Wapitia, Waippitia ... some crappy biplane I can't pronounce.

Oh and 2 recon hurricanes.

The japanese have 5 Sentrais (27 or 31) of Sallies, one Sentai of Anns that can update to Lilly and some recon planes. Strangely I have not seen a single Sally around, but the Anns frequently come to get shredded.

They have 3 Sentais (42 or 49 planes, can't remember) of mostly Nates. Each Sentai has a main part and 2 detachments of 14. One of these detachments has Oscar Ib at start.

1 Sentai can upgrade completely to Oscar Ib. Replacement rate is 12 per month.
1 and 2/3 Sentais can upgrade to Oscar Ia. Replacement rate is 12 per month.
One detachment of 14 can upgrade to Oscar Ic. Replacement rate is 4 per month.

2. Ground
Divisions in this scenario are divided in regiments and other units and cannot be recombined. Each Division has a separate small corps HQ unit.

Most of my troops start with disablements and far from full TOE. I have switched off the replacements on the worst units.

Currently, one month into the game, I have around 800-900 AV of British, Indian and Burmese troops. 200+ is at Rangoon(bad and still filling out units), 600+ is at Sittang and the rest is on garrison duty, sitting on the dirt road from central Burma to Thailand or trekking the Jungle from India.

The XP is between 10 and 40. The units with higher XP are HQs and Base Forces. I have a lot of Burma rifles battalions of 10-20 AV with 10 XP. At start, I have sent most of the units to Rangoon to rest and fill in somewhat, and only sent them forward when I saw the Japanese near Moulmein.

Later on I will get ~300 AV of Chinese.

I have no Base forces to spare, because I am short on engineers and Aviation support. Most of my engineers are in the two RN Base forces, now building fortifications at Sittang Bridge. I am at 2.97 and I will probably stop and pull them out when I am at 3, because the Japanese are coming in. I haven't built forts at Pegu and I will probably skip defending if the AI Breaks my first line.

The Japanese start with 2 division and gradually get reinforcements. At the end they will have 5 or 6 Divisions worth of crack troops. All Thai troops are Static.

All of their regiments start with 110 to 120% TOE, but they have no replacements in the pool. So every combat squad destroyed is permanently out.

3. Naval
There are mines at Rangoon and Bangkok, and we both have some Naval support, but no ships whatsoever.

4. Random Musings

Paoshan needs 20 garison but has no troops at start. I have sent one of the terrible 10 XP units there.

Loosing Rangoon is loosing the scenario. It is worth the most points.

[HansBolter]

While not recon type aircraft, the Lysanders do carry cameras and can be effective for short range recon of ground troops you want to bomb.

[tarkalak]

ORIGINAL: HansBolter

While not recon type aircraft, the Lysanders do carry cameras and can be effective for short range recon of ground troops you want to bomb.

And that is all they do right now.

EDIT: They have poor Recon skill though. I have 16 active Lysanders right now.

[tarkalak]

Sittang Bridge and Rangoon troops.

[tarkalak]

If the losses from the AAR is to be believed, 214 Regiment is now a support unit only. I like that. Now the AI only has to follow the Reverse Ninja Law and send them one at a time .

The 214th retreated back across the river, so I had only the Jap HQ left at Sittang. And there are arrows in the units at Moulmein. So I decided not to counterattack.

With that said I still tested a counterattack, that fared pretty well. The AI had 2 other regiments crossing that fared well in their Shock attack but my Delibarate counterattack threw them back across the river with about 20+ combat squads destroyed and 0 adjusted AV. They had -supply and -disruption while my guys didn't have minuses.

Oh well, that was just a test, so I loaded the save and NOT attacked.

So next turn I bombed the Japs at Moulmein and they didn't cross. Two-three days later 4 regiments crossed into Sittang for 1:2, but they barely missed 1:1. Destroyed combat squads were 2 each and 40+ disabled (me) for 80+ disabled (Japs). Forts held at 3.

Now I wonder if I should order the retreat to Rangoon or sit tight for the next attack.

In other news some more Oscar Ib were splashed over Raeheng for one Hurricane and zero H81s.

[tarkalak]

The current situation after the second crossing of the Japanese. I think that I will hold the next attack on Sittang and then retreat with most of the troops. The good ones anyway.

The Air War: I have very few bombers and not good ones. Blenheim IV is the best I have and they have no replacements. My major plan for the airwar is to kill planes by sweeping Rahaeng with the Best of AVG. Usually they splash a few Oscars for no loss. Most of the H81 losses come from two hiccups I had - I once swept with a fatagued group (1) and they flew a single escort mission (2), all by pure "accident". I blame the staff. [:D]

[tarkalak]

Ground combat at Sittang Bridge after the last update:
The next DA dropped the fort to two with minimum casualties on both sides.
The second one resulted in 70 Jap squads disabled.
The third one is below. [:D]

Forts are 2 and at 75% to 3rd.

Also the Chinese have shown up at Meiktila (below Mandalay). They bring 190 AV with 30 XP.
In 7 days I will get an infantry battalion and two armored Regiments with Stuarts. That should be enough to hold them for a while.

-----------------------------------------

Feb 14th.

Ground combat at Sittang Bridge (56,54)

Japanese Deliberate attack

Attacking force 11741 troops, 67 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 365

Defending force 26409 troops, 297 guns, 154 vehicles, Assault Value = 894

Japanese adjusted assault: 0

Allied adjusted defense: 891

Japanese assault odds: 1 to 99 (fort level 2)

Combat modifiers
Defender: terrain(+), leaders(+), preparation(-), experience(-)
Attacker:

Japanese ground losses:
687 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 8 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 11 disabled
Engineers: 28 destroyed, 25 disabled
Guns lost 4 (1 destroyed, 3 disabled)

Allied ground losses:
13 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 2 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled

Assaulting units:
143rd Infantry Regiment
112th Infantry Regiment
214th Infantry Regiment
215th Infantry Regiment
33rd Engineer Regiment
33rd Division
33rd Mountain Gun Regiment

Defending units:
11th Burma Rifles Battalion
6th Burma Rifles Battalion
Rangoon BAF Battalion
4th Burma Rifles Battalion
1st Gloucestershire Battalion
10th Burma Rifles Battalion
2/BFF Brigade
2nd Burma Brigade
1/BFF Brigade
1st Burma Brigade
16th Indian Brigade
48th Gurkha Brigade
56th Madras Coy
13th Indian Brigade
46th Indian Brigade
3rd Burma Rifles Battalion
1st Iniskilling's Battalion
17th Indian Div
103rd RN Base Force
1st Burma Div
108th RAF Base Force
27th Indian Mountain Gun Regiment
106th RAF Base Force
3rd LAA Bty

[BBfanboy]

The AI is not good at evaluating whether it should attack or not. The script says it should fight its way to Rangoon and take it, but considering all the factors in how best to do that is very hard to program, so it will likely just keep on attacking and bring more units up piecemeal. Common pattern for the AI.

[tarkalak]

I don't hope that the AI will do anything smart. My main goal is to get a feeling for the ground war.

[tarkalak]

There is something I do not understand.[&:]

A few turns ago the pool for "Ind Inf Section 42" had:
Pool: 104
Used So Far 180

Now one of the Indian Brigades have upgraded to "Ind Inf Section 42" drawing ~100 squads.

I expected the pool to show:
Pool: ~0
Used So far: ~280

But instead I get:
Pool: 107
Used So far: ~288

Used so far looks correct, but why the pool didn't go down?