how much is needed

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: dougmichel

While I am thinking about it, what are good leaders for land units like divisions and the like? Do i want combat, assault, etc and what stats should be the priority?

Land combat rating should be a priority. Aggression, Inspiration and others secondary to that.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Uncivil Engineer

ORIGINAL: dougmichel

Thanks for the info all. I am playing Japan. I don't recall what the enemy AV was adjusted to in the combat report, but mine was definitely lower. I did attack the day of arrival, i will remember to wait a few days in the future. My squads do have embedded engineers but I don't have a specific combat engineer squad with this group at this time. I am now moving ships and planes down to bombard them, and will get recon going on it. As for reducing their supply, I normally try to do this, but as I recall Noumea has resources and industry so this might not be possible. I think my HQ unit needs moved closer as it was too far away so I will get that remedied.

Thanks again for the tips. Land combat is the one part of the game that I have the least grasp on it seems. This so far has easily been my most successful campaign however as I have more than 3x VP to the allies in June 1943. I think if that holds until December I will win, but the allies have begun their attacks. My carriers are always ready to pluck invasion fleets from the water before they arrive, but some are finding holes and getting through

To get back to the original question - x4 forts at Noumea, which IIRC is x3 jungle-rough, you need x12 his AV to maybe get a 1:1 result. His infantry (or Marine) division is way better than yours (firepower), so you need more than 2. With 4 Japanese divisions, and a couple combat engineer regiments, and continuous air and naval bombardment, you should be able to wear him down in a couple weeks. He's likely got tons of supply, too.

I don't think they multiply, I think they add. Still plenty to overcome!

[dougmichel]

Thanks all, finally broke their back and took out about 30 total units, mostly support units of course. Also trapped hundreds of bombers in the island chain between Fiji and Noumea and bombarded them into total repair and then landed a division and destroyed them all. Feels good to finally get a major victory after so many turns of nothing. Just hoping to hold out to the win condition at the end of the year, 5 months left. Gotta be vigilant for AI invasions now. Massive sub screen to the east of Rabaul and the eastern island chains are helping spot TF on the way in.

[RangerJoe]

That is the easiest way to get rid of Allied bombers later in the war - bombard their airstrips with naval task forces. Invading is just the icing on the cake.

[RogerJNeilson]

That assumes you have some navy left to bombard with later in the war.........


Roger

[geofflambert]

Surround the enemy if you can. Have plenty of combat engineer squads. You will notice that you will lose a lot of casualties in your combat engineer squads reducing fortifications. If the fortification level is four, you are going to lose a lot of combat engineers and may well run out of them before the fortification level is reduced to zero. In that case you may have to sit and wait for your replacement system to come up with some more combat engineers, and I mean a long time as they are precious commodities not to be expended lightly. Proper preparation prevents poor results (edit, performance).

[geofflambert]

You also need to bomb the heck out of his airfield (and port if one is present) in order to keep his engineers busy with repairs rather than fortifying.

[geofflambert]

Also, maybe you should fire the unit commanders and replace them with better ones.

[rustysi]

All the above is good advice. Remember you may plan the perfect op and be done in by 'bad dice rolls' no matter what.