Ground combat

[Chris21wen]

How does the game resolve both sides being given attack orders in the same hex.

The manual says this 'If both sides have been given attack orders, the Japanese attack is resolved first and then the Allied attack is resolved.' I think this means that Japanese attacks are carried before the allies and not the resolution of a battle.

I like to think unit that are attacking lose terrain and definitely fortification benefits but there is a sequence to ground combat so who fires first etc.

[RangerJoe]

I am sure that there is a sequence in the manual.

[Chris21wen]

Yes there is but it talks in terms attacker v defender. 8.4.2.1 Defender here could simply mean any unit on the end of the attack no matter what combat mode it's in.

But what determines which attacker would go first if both sides had units set to an attack? If it's the Japanese, as the manual suggests, then they will always have an advantage.

[RangerJoe]

The Japanese may not have the advantage since their units might get trashed during their attack.

[BBfanboy]

I'm pretty sure the game uses the starting state of both units when it is working out the attack results. I.E. , the Allied side strength at the start of their attack is what they had before the Japanese attack. The Japanese side during the Allied attack starts out without the battle fatigue and casualties it developed during its attack. That is the only way to fairly decide a simultaneous attack when you cannot do a volley by volley resolution.
After the results of both sides' attacks have been applied, the game decides morale, leadership etc. to see if either side will retreat or surrender.

PS - as RJ hints, unit for unit the Allied troops (except Chinese/Malayan/Burmese) have better firepower so units of the same level (company, battalion, regiment, division) fighting only (excluding artillery etc) equivalent enemy units with similar experience, morale and leadership gives an advantage to the Allies. The Japanese successes in the first six months are against units with poor supply, experience, morale and leadership so they sweep the board.

[Chris21wen]

I'm pretty sure the game uses the starting state of both units when it is working out the attack results. I.E. , the Allied side strength at the start of their attack is what they had before the Japanese attack. The Japanese side during the Allied attack starts out without the battle fatigue and casualties it developed during its attack. That is the only way to fairly decide a simultaneous attack when you cannot do a volley by volley resolution.
After the results of both sides' attacks have been applied, the game decides morale, leadership etc. to see if either side will retreat or surrender.

.....

That's the way I do it with one small caveat. I like to think that any unit in deliberate or shock mode would get no benefit from forts when on the end of an attack.

[Chris21wen]

Can someone tell me why there are two leader combat modifiers for the defender when there's no HQs within range?

Ground combat at Lunga (114,138)

Japanese Deliberate attack

Attacking force 3876 troops, 26 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 127

Defending force 3421 troops, 80 guns, 8 vehicles, Assault Value = 118

Japanese adjusted assault: 73

Allied adjusted defense: 285

Japanese assault odds: 1 to 3

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

Japanese ground losses:
583 casualties reported
Squads: 3 destroyed, 42 disabled
Non Combat: 1 destroyed, 2 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled

Allied ground losses:
7 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled

Assaulting units:
124th Infantry Regiment

Defending units:
164th Infantry Regiment

[BBfanboy]

Perhaps the combat coding uses two of the Leaders' traits, like Leadership and Aggression or Inspiration and Aggression?

[Yaab]

Combat has fire phase and assault phase thus one unit can get two opposite modifiers?

[Chris21wen]

I didn't want to say but my thoughts were bombardment and assault but fire and assault makes more sense.

That does raise another question. What leader rating is used and what's it measured against to generate a positive or negative modifier. This result was under test with the leaders of the two units having identical stats, 50 across the board.

During this test, with both units set to deliberate attack the Japanese always went first. Which is what the manual says! It appear to me that the Japanese will always have the advantage when attacking first but as RangerJoe said this may not be the case. I can't put my finger on it but I'm still inclined to think they do!

[RangerJoe]

Pass one test and fail another . . .

[Chris21wen]

Pass one test and fail another . . .

Yes it could be as simple as that but sometime, actually more often than not, some combat modifiers do not appear, E.g The result of the same units.

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

Only one leader mod, but with an experience mod instead. This was the one I was querying.

Defender: terrain(+), leaders(+), leaders(-)
Attacker: leaders(-)

Th1s makes me believe they are three possible modifier states, Pass, no mod applied or fail? If (+) increase the AV, no mod it satays the same then a (-) should actually reduce the AV?

[BBfanboy]

Yes, a 'Supply-' modifier definitely reduces AV so I am sure the other modifiers with a '-' do the same. I have always assumed leaders are compared with each other rather than some neutral standard and that there is a randomizing modifier in the die roll to determine which one makes the best choices during the combat. Stats favour the better leader but even great leaders can guess wrong once in a while.

[Yaab]

I just repalyed one of the initiaa battles vs Japanese AI at Tsingsing and for the first time I had both leader (+) and (-), and this is the first time I lost more than 10 guns in this battle. 13 guns destroyed! Guess leader(-) may also influence your retreat/pursue "phase".

Ground combat at Tsingsing (90,40)

Japanese Shock attack

Attacking force 28266 troops, 281 guns, 101 vehicles, Assault Value = 905
Defending force 2557 troops, 16 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 112

Japanese adjusted assault: 653
Allied adjusted defense: 13

Japanese assault odds: 50 to 1 (fort level 1)

Japanese forces CAPTURE Tsingsing !!!

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

Japanese ground losses:
152 casualties reported
Squads: 1 destroyed, 15 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 2 disabled

Allied ground losses:
1942 casualties reported
Squads: 71 destroyed, 27 disabled
Non Combat: 25 destroyed, 15 disabled
Engineers: 6 destroyed, 0 disabled

Guns lost 16 (13 destroyed, 3 disabled)

Units retreated 1

[PaxMondo]

Can someone tell me why there are two leader combat modifiers for the defender when there's no HQs within range?

I am not aware that the combat Leader bonus is referencing HQ leaders, I have always known this to be any leader of any unit in the battle. Thus you can have positive and negative bonuses.

[Chris21wen]

Carried a few ground combat test trying to try and work out how the combat modifiers work, specifically leaders. It proved impossible to be definite, to many other modifies being applied with no indication within the game as to how each is applied.

However the test did throw up some useful stuff.

All done under 28.4.

Mostly, each series of test was carried out 6 times, six because that's all that would fit easily onto a landscape sheet. I did do two of the tests 12 times and there's a few with only 2 tests.

So, what did all these test prove. Nothing concrete is the answer because I did not do enough of each setting but they do show tendencies. The test were done:

Guadalcanal scenario at a Japanese held Lunga, Sized 0, (port 0/1, no AF). Each side had a regiment, Japan 127AV and US 118AV, both set to 50 Exp, 60 morale, 0 disruption, 0 fatigue. Except for the first two series, prep was set at 100.

Their leaders had a rating of 50 across the board for Land, Aggression, Leadership and Inspiration except when I tested their individual ratings, then one or more was increased.

I always used the Allies in attack, deliberate and two shock. Japan set to deliberate with 2 each of move and reserve.

Generally
There's no such thing a stone cold certainty that a modifier will apply, not even terrain. I had one where no terrain mod was used?

Randomness through out resulting is some strange combat result compared to the modifier that were applied.

Preparation
As you would expect, the high the prep the more the adjust AV tended to be for both sides.
• A -prep mod was used but in all tests I carried out there was never a +prep mod applied
• The higher prep was the less likely the -prep mod was applied.

Raw AV v Adjusted AV
In all but one test did I every have a raw AV level used and that was with a -leader mod. The reason is probably down to terrain, an almost constant mod. There were often huge differences between raw and adjusted AV. I've highlight the largest and lowers for each side.

The other thing about adjusted AV is it's randomness. Just looking at the first two test for Japan. Same mods but the adjusted AV for each was 89 and 135.

As Japan (raw AV 127) was always on the defensive their adjusted AV was mostly higher mainly down to terrain. The largest was 1481 for the Japanese when a +Terrain, +Fort and +leader mods were used. The lowest was 79 when one positive mod (+Terrain) and two negative mods (-experience, -fatigue).

The Allies were mostly less than raw AV (118). The highest being 111 when a +leader mod was used, the lowest being 0 (zero) during a shock attack. Needless to say it didn't go well.

About half way through I decided to add combat losses. If anything these where more wildly different than the mods and adjusted AV. On more than one occasion were you would think, based on mods used, you'd get one result when I got the complete opposite.

Positive applied mods
Terrain Modifier
• Only the defender benefits.
• Terrain in Lunga was always Jungle and it always added a +Terrain mod with one one exception when it was not used.
• There's no such thing a -terrain mod.
Fort Modifier
• Fort were set at 0 or 5 for a base and 3 for a unit.
• If there are no forts then no modifier is possible. Only the defender benefits.
• Were a base has forts, a +mod was usually applied but there is a small random factor preventing it. Combat could reduce Fort levels.
• Were units were dug in, there was no modifier and any unit forts where set to zero no matter what the result was.
• There's no such thing as a -Fort mod.

Negative applied mods
These apply to Experience, Fatigue and Disruption.
Expereince
• Experience was the most used mod of those only ever applied negatively.
• Despite both sides having the same unit and leader stats it was only ever used on the Defenders side.
• At 50exp the rate of use appears to be around 2:1. (-Exp/None).
• It was never positive.
Fatigue and Disruption
• Both units were fresh and this never got tested in any way however there were one or two occasions were a -fat mod was used.
• For disruption it was even less, just one. This one notable was the Allied Shock attack disaster.

Positive and Negative applied modifiers
This applied to leaders and Op mode.
Leader and leader stats.
The real reason for these test and I'm still none the wiser really. Unless stated the leaders had a 50 rating across the board
• There could be applied positively, negatively or with none.
• There were 10 occasion were a leader mod was applied twice in the form of +lead/-lead.
• It's still unclear how these two leader mods are used.
• When I tested the leader's skills it was always using the Allied leader in attack. My conclusion, I'll PASS. Even when I bumped up the four skills to 99 and took the same Japanese skills down to 5 I could not work it out and the test was repeated 12x.

Op mode
Only tested this eight time using move, reserve and shock attack.
• Op mode appears as a -Op mod when units are not in combat mode when attack. (E.g. Move and reserve)
• +Op mod was applied during shock attacks.

Morale was never tested.

[Yaab]

Code overflowing perhaps?

I have never seen a battle yet with a defender not benefiting from terrain(+) modifier when defending in +2,+3,+4 terrain. Weird.

[Chris21wen]

Code overflowing perhaps?

I have never seen a battle yet with a defender not benefiting from terrain(+) modifier when defending in +2,+3,+4 terrain. Weird.

What I thought, but it happened as did the fort one on more than one occasion.

[BBfanboy]

Re: the Prep factor - IIRC Alfred said it applies only to landing on a beach and when defending - not when attacking.

I think the Exp. factor might be used in calculating whether Surprise is a modifier for the attacker. In Naval combat the surprise factor is often mentioned in the combat text and it gives the side getting it one or two volleys of firing before a reply. I see no reason why it wouldn't be similar in Land combat, but I don't watch it play out so I don't know if the text at the start of Land combat mentions it.

Unit Morale works in combination with Leader Inspiration/Aggression to decide if the unit will keep attacking or, if defending, hold/retreat/surrender.

[PaxMondo]

Carried a few ground combat test trying to try and work out how the combat modifiers work, specifically leaders. It proved impossible to be definite, to many other modifies being applied with no indication within the game as to how each is applied.
.....

Yes, the land combat model is fairly complex and we have known this for some time. IIRC there was a LOT of player testing on this way back in the WitP days. AFAIK, this model was NOT part of the Henderson Team scope for WitPAE ... meaning no significant changes were made other than bug fixes. This is unlike the air combat model which we know was significantly updated.

Things that I am pretty sure were reviewed/updated with respect to land combat:
- arty fire and firepower impact in general
- air bombing of ground units
- naval bombing of ground units
- TOE of ground units and locations was reviewed and refined (for several units this was to get them in the historical place at the right time which meant they didn't necessarily start in their historical location. (If this makes sense). There are several units which had historical impact in the war and there are some limitations in the game engine (restricted HQ's are the biggest issue). The Henderson team worked out how to get them in the right place at the right time so that the historical war would play out.*


* There are some recent mods which have reversed many of these changes back to the original historical starting point, but it means that they will never be able to participate in the historical battle(s) in which they did. For example: There are a number of Aussie units that are in this list. They started the war somewhere in OZ, but were prominently known for battles on certain islands which the player cannot re-produce due to the restricted HQ that they are part of.

At one time I tried to test the combat effect of Leaders and ended up just like your results: NADA. I made 100's of runs and all I got were inconclusive results. There are just TOO many variables and too difficult/impossible to isolate them. Maybe now I could setup an AI test bed and make a few 1000 runs ... but that's what it would take ... 1000's of runs ...