Scenario 17 ... for your comments

[moses]

OK I may try this. The way I see the game shaping up might make it difficult to do solitare.

Outline:

1.) Japan has to try and take Yenan which now will take more than 5 or 6 divisions. Probably 10-12.

2.) China will counterattack in central region. China should do something as casualties are actually good for China. Less mouths to feed.

3.) This may well create a tense situation which may not be well simulated in solitare mode. Cat and mouse situations are hard to do solitare.

4.) In the meantime Japan bombs chinese industry. The air war is another cat and mouse game. China can't defend every base every day.

Anyway I'll give it a shot.

[Mr.Frag]

4.) In the meantime Japan bombs chinese industry. The air war is another cat and mouse game. China can't defend every base every day.

Yep, but at the same time ... China should be doing their own dirty deeds to screw up any *soon* to be Japan's industry.

Remember to turn OFF repairs for China and any form of base expansion ... who cares if the industry is destroyed when Japan gets it, all the better! [;)]

Keeping engineers in bases until they fall is another thing ... bonus industry damage against Japan.

China's airforce should basically remain grounded until supply dictates otherwise. Aircraft eat supply that is needed by the grunts. Grunts win the war, not the aircraft. Use them extremely sparingly as the situation arises. Remember that a size 1 runway is all that is needed for CAP ... don't build 'em up for Japan. Remember that CAP eats supply as does repairing aircraft. Use only when it is worth using. Better to burn your troops.

Play China like you have been getting your butt kicked for years, not like the war just started.

[moses]

OK I started but didn't get much done (just JP first turn) as I had a lot of PBEM to do last night and wife required maintenance.

I'm going to track free supply at all Chines bases as I think this will be the main scenario problem.

Honestly with the Changes that appear to be going into 1.5 the land theaters may well be fixed without the OOB changes. Its possible the OOB changes will cause us to overshoot and create the great Chinese offensive of 1942.

[Ron Saueracker]

Question. Is this scenario being used as a test of the combat system prior to fixing it or is it just a test to see how far the OOB needs to be "tweaked" to keep Japan from running amok despite the inadequate land combat model.

Just noticed you guys are testing a tweak which may alleviate the nasty ability of attackers not sufferring losses if combat odds are favourable. Good. Regardless of how much disparity there is with forces, at this scale the defender should always get a defensive fire phase vs the attacker.

[Black Cat]

Another Question.

Is this being done to balance it in PBEM play or VS the AI play ??

[moses]

Its under 1.4 prior to any changes which why I made my last comment above. None of this may be needed as they it appears that the land combat system is being seriously looked at and may well give acceptable results without any OOB fiddling.

In any case I'll just play with this as I want to see how the supply works.

[moses]

I'm sure it for PBEM. I don't think anyone thinks China AI has a chance in the world against Japan. I havn't hardly seen this even discussed.

Although in the end if they fix land combat this may not be a bad scenario to play as Japan vs. the AI. Maybe AI will have a chance with the larger forces.

[moses]

Changsa has already been reduced by 185 resourses. I finnally brought in the AVG and the results are listed below. My Nates were crushed but I shouldn't have had them flying anyway. Against the zero's the P-40's have no chance to stop the bombing attack. By the end of Dec Changsa will not be producing much.

The fighting in Yenan is working about right. I'm sending a bunch of Jap Divisions there to see if it can be taken. I've tested various combinations of attacks at Yenan and it appears to be a stalmate with the forces immediately at hand. I'll see how it goes when the bulk of the Japanese force arrives. For now they bombard.

Supply is still the main concern as China still has dozens of units in the red.


Day Air attack on Changsha , at 47,36--12 Dec 42.

Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 26
Ki-27 Nate x 32
Ki-30 Ann x 38
Ki-21 Sally x 31

Allied aircraft
P-40B Tomahawk x 46

Japanese aircraft losses
A6M2 Zero: 2 destroyed
Ki-27 Nate: 62 destroyed--Nates are worthless against any real fighter.
Ki-30 Ann: 1 damaged

Allied aircraft losses
P-40B Tomahawk: 45 destroyed, 3 damaged--17 killed actual
Resources hits 31

[Mr.Frag]

Red or Pink?

[moses]

The units are in red. The problem is when you raised unit strenth it automatically increased the units supply requirement but no extra supply was added to units. So as soon as you load up the game all the upgraded units have supply requirements of roughly 900 and roughly 600 on-hand. As soon as the get in the littlest bit of combat (like they see a plane) their supply requirements go to around 1500.

Now since most of the bases are yellow and look to stay that way for awhile very few of these units have drawn supply. Thankfully the units in Yenan have all done so (have no idea why just these) but the ones in Changsa are still sitting at 600 supply with daily requirements of 1500.

Overall free base supply is slowly rising. Started with 83,258 and checked after 8 days and it was 87,258. So in the long run this may not be a problem. In the short run I have lots of units that I'm afraid to send to fight.

Everywhere else in the game you start out with each unit having enough supply to meet its monthly non-combat supply requirement. I'm not sure why these units shouldn't be balanced out in a similar way. Unless the goal is to prevent China from counterattacking early on.

EDIT: Just loaded game back up and made sure: Definately red.

[pry]

ORIGINAL: moses


Overall free base supply is slowly rising. Started with 83,258 and checked after 8 days and it was 87,258. So in the long run this may not be a problem. In the short run I have lots of units that I'm afraid to send to fight.

Everywhere else in the game you start out with each unit having enough supply to meet its monthly non-combat supply requirement. I'm not sure why these units shouldn't be balanced out in a similar way. Unless the goal is to prevent China from counterattacking early on.

The goal was not to make the Chinese OFFENSIVE at all, I simply wanted to make them strong enough to defend against the Japanese should they chose to launch an offensive and not be steamrolled like they were previously, according to your report it looks like it is working along the lines I wanted it to.

The Chinese supply situation should be at best rotten that is historical, supply in the pink at bases should be the norm... keeping the Chinese rather static in their deployments. You should be able to move units to defend other locations, they should arrive beat up from the trip then slowly start regaining strength but never (well at least until very late war) have enough to launch an all out offensive of their own.

Good work Moses I appreciate the feedback...

[moses]

Just realised that I screwed up and had Changsa and Wuchow repairing resourses the whole game. I'm at 29 Dec and I guess at this point I've burned around 30,000 sp unnecessarily. Still free base supply has risen to about 100,000 despite this. It was helped by about 13,000 sp that I captured at Kaifeng.

Yenan still holds against 8 div and 4 ind bdes. I sent 3 extra chinese corps to the north. In the central region my counterattack took Kaifeng but fell short (though very close at Hsinyung. I also counterattacked at the city south of changsa but could not make progress. Still it looks like the Japanense player must be very careful shifting additional troops north as the center may suffer a rout.

Supply is a problem everywhere but the north. I have 5 or 6 corps now with zero supply. The route to Sien is now weak as all troops there are very low on supply and still out of position following the counterattack.

The theater is very strange as corps move across the map at light speed. A Japanese player will have to be very careful in PBEM as sudden counteroffensives are always a threat.

[BraveHome]

ORIGINAL: moses

OK I started but didn't get much done (just JP first turn) as I had a lot of PBEM to do last night and wife required maintenance.

I'm hoping this significantly improved morale without prolonged down time....[;)]

[scout1]

How of curiosity, what were the conclusions drawn from this exercise ?

[Sneer]

Taking political situation in china and fact that chinase factions were preserving forces to fight each other(politics) I vote for creating static inf units in major chinase bases. it will keep cities secure and rest of units will be manouverable. China will be easier to defend and its counterattacking abilities will not go as high as in scenario proposed.

[moses]

Honestly I got bored with it. The problem with the scenario is that the constraining factor is supply. And supply problem cause movement bugs in the game. I had several instances of Chinese stacks being unable to move at all despite the fact that no enemy units were present in their hex or the destination hex. Keep in mind that I was trying to withdraw toward friendly cities.

The problems with ground combat have nothing to do with OOB, they have to do with a problems in how ground combat is modeled. Hopefully some of these problems are being fixed in 1.5. To reiterate the problems with large land forces.

1.) Movement is too fast.
2.) Combat between large forces is too fast.
3.) Supply movement is to easy and too fast.
4.) Combat is a winner take all system. (retreated force losses heavily while the attacker losses very little.)

We'll see what 1.5 brings.

[Qwerty]

Is this scenario still available?

I've tried downloading it but it appears to be a broken link on my end...

[Halsey]

Out of publication. It was a test scenario only.

[pad152]

There are several issues in Witp China, and the only solution seems to be geared for PBM play.

Giving the AI more troops & supplies is useless if it can't do anything with them. The AI is completly brain dead in China, I've seen the AI move troop into a enemy base and never capture it! I don't expect much just some type of reaction from the AI.

Too many people here seem to think of Witp as a PBM game only.

[el cid again]

Since the standard Chinese unit was a "field army" with only two divisions

and since a three division unit had a different name ("group army")

one wonders why do this?

I have made China a harder nut to crack by the simple expedient of making the
terrain more mountainous - it is very much not the way it looks on the stock map -
and paying some attention to the local economy - supplies won't move down long
trails in CHS and stock - but they do in RHS - and by some good luck with modifying
the CHS concept of a guerilla unit.

Making China tough is possible without making the pretty awful stock OB even
more awful.