OK, here's the summary of what happened in China in recent weeks.
Phase 1 (yellow)
1. He left Hsinyang weakly defended, I got greedy, marched from Ichang and captured it (late January I think) I wanted to defend it, reinforced the city with couple units, for 8-9 units total.
2. He forms enormous infantry force near Homan crossroads, marches them to Hsinyang, simoultaneously sending tank unit behind Hsinyang back.
3. He does the same in Wuhan and Chengting, but his plans fail there because I escape or fight my way out on time.
4. My relatively stong force Y marches from Homan, trying to relieve Hsinyang. They are too late and too weak. He destroys Hsinyang defenders.
5. Still not realising enormous size of his force, and thinking Ichang is next after Hsinyang fell, I actually try to reinforce Ichang with pitiful force of 3-4 units (he would have easily crushed them).
Phase 2 (magenta)
6. Now, he assembles forces from all three encirclements (two unsuccessful ones, and Hsinyang) and marches towards Homan.
7. My force Y (the one which tried to relieve Hsinyang) falls back to Homan. Still not realising the full size of his armada, I think city can be held (it was level 5, and my force Y was not that weak).
8. He does the same trick AGAIN - sends one tank unit behind my back etc. I play chicken, waiting one turn too late to go back and his encirclement is semi successful. His enormous shock attack with half million men takes Homan - no kidding, I think he got 12k APs on that attack - but defenders are not destroyed, they retreat north of the river. Had I been smart, they would have retreated in some order, towards Sian (not that it would change much I can see now).
Sian is next. With Homan defenders out of the way, it falls easily. Now my forces in North China are cut off. This is the moment when I felt some panic, because Chungking the capital was not very well defended, my troops were either very far away, out of the play (Homan defenders pushed beyond the river) or destroyed in Hsinyang, still too far away in rebuilding schedule.
He could have marched directly to Chungking having some chance to take it in coup de main (I had only couple units there). Also, he would have cut off Ichang defenders (see item no. 5 above).
Luckily he chose neither of those options - last I saw of his enormous army was marching east (he left 60k guys to defend Sian (Xian) and some on the Sian-Homan road. That was a week ago. His, now not-so-enormous-but-still-very-big army is either preparing to attack USSR with KA (don't believe this), marching south to attack Changsha, or is preparing to attack my isolated North China forces.
9. Ichang forces are pulled back and will not be lost (phew!).
10. Chungking is reinforced and now cannot fall. Hsinyang units are less than a week from being rebuilt.
11. Some of units beaten at Homan are finding their way back, beaten and exhausted (but very experienced by Chinese army standards [:D]). Poor guys have to attack accross the river, suffer auto attack rule, but that's war.
Couple days ago we started air war over China, which is already explained in detail in recent posts.
Now.... operationally, I'd say last couple weeks in China were Mog's marginal victory. Perhaps not entirely "marginal" but certainly not decisive either.
Strategically? Well, you be the judge. 500k Japanese troops spent more than a month (and are still spending more time) chasing Chinese. He captured two bases (three if we count Hsinyang), can probably capture 2-3 more (none of them vital for me). He destroyed 8-9 units in Hsinyang (which will be rebuilt). Another 300k+ force was spending this time on Luzon.
Save for the occassional KB raid on Noumea and Fiji (couple AKs sunk), and small force landings (unopposed) in Solomons Pacific was mostly quiet.
