Will Chungking Hold? Place your bets!

[niceguy2005]

ORIGINAL: qgaliana
But an eight month siege with repeated assaults is 240 turns of hassle for a player where he gets no sense of progress, and limited or misleading feedback as to whether the situation is improving.

Seems to me the above is a perfect summation of what a real life siege is like for an attacker.

Still it all goes hand in hand with the rest of the game - touch this without changing land movement and supply movement and you'll probably make things worse.

I agree with this. Ground combat is not my favorite thing in witp, but it is workable.
The supply system I feel is pretty good. Going mucking around with the supply system and it will probably break the game.

IMHO the problem is Japan's ability to completely starve out china and drive chinese forces back to Chunking within a year. While there is historical evidence that Japan could have driven deeper into China and eventually did, it is suspect whether they could have conquered all of it while simulatneously fighting UK, Australia and the US.

The only problem is that the original game design may not have been intended to support complete conquest of China.

[niceguy2005]

ORIGINAL: treespider

Would be interesting to see if RUPD would be able to divide his force in half. Attack with 1/2 the 1st set of days and 1/2 the second set of days...in particular since he was able to bring enough troops for a 3:1 on the 1st day.

The best seige tactics I have witnessed in witp, involve the attacker using deliberate attack every 3-7 days to reduce forts. On the off days they will bombard and there is heavy aerial bombardment. Such a systems tends to take down 1-2 fort levels per week.

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: niceguy2005

ORIGINAL: treespider

Would be interesting to see if RUPD would be able to divide his force in half. Attack with 1/2 the 1st set of days and 1/2 the second set of days...in particular since he was able to bring enough troops for a 3:1 on the 1st day.

The best seige tactics I have witnessed in witp, involve the attacker using deliberate attack every 3-7 days to reduce forts. On the off days they will bombard and there is heavy aerial bombardment. Such a systems tends to take down 1-2 fort levels per week.

That's what I generally use after a place is isolated...the wash, rinse, repeat method... You may find a thread from sometime ago where I analyzed a seige of Manila I was conducting....(in this case because of the supply ...its a different animal)

Essentially the Steps are:

Day 1 - Bombard with Everybody - It raises the supplies required and Supplies on hand which will aid in post attack recovery.
Day 2 - Rest the Assault Troops, Bombard with Everybody else - The Supplies on hand stays high for your assault troops but the supplies required drop.
Day 3 - Deliberate Attack -
Day 4 - Rest Assault troops, Continue to Bombard others Units
Go to Day 1

If you have enough troops you can stagger your assaults...

After the Day 3 Attack Disruption will be in the 70's. Day 4 Disruption drops then when youstar5t with Day 1 Disruption will be around 50 Day 2 Disruption in the 20's then at the start of Day 3 before the attack, disruption should be in the teens.

As I mentioned above Chungking is a different animal and in the zen of the game you can consider it to represent the real drain on resources that China had become for the Japanese.

[qgaliana]

ORIGINAL: niceguy2005

ORIGINAL: qgaliana
But an eight month siege with repeated assaults is 240 turns of hassle for a player where he gets no sense of progress, and limited or misleading feedback as to whether the situation is improving.

Seems to me the above is a perfect summation of what a real life siege is like for an attacker.

A reasonable point, I wasn't very clear. Totally agree for a sit and wait siege but the repeated assaults should give you something more than just body count on your side.

What bugs me is it seems everything is weighted beyond reason towards the defender (30:1 losses are medieval storm the castle numbers - looks like none of the attackers bothered firing a shot). You can pound your head for months without accomplishing anything because the defender will not take any real casualties until you get odds to drop forts. There is no way to attrit the defense through sheer bloody minded assaults no matter how often you rotate troops in (if you choose to do so). As long as the defender has supplies and forts, the disrupted units can be replaced pretty easily.

That magic point where weight of numbers causes the forts to drop mimics reality but really only for the final collapse and surrender. It works overall because it takes so long to get there. I'd like a more gradual process (see 8 months of nothing above). In reality, a big numerical superiority would let the attackers focus on chunks of the defense, suppress them with weight of fire and eliminate them. It would be costly but nothing like what we see, even with deliberate attacks. Right now though, the only way to weaken forces in this situation seems to be to starve them.

Nik, btw you are very correct - you still have to play the game. I don't think I would ever shock attack in this situation. And I think the only time I have is with armored units only and when most guns have been stripped away.

[tsimmonds]

Essentially the Steps are:

Day 1 - Bombard with Everybody - It raises the supplies required and Supplies on hand which will aid in post attack recovery.
Day 2 - Rest the Assault Troops, Bombard with Everybody else - The Supplies on hand stays high for your assault troops but the supplies required drop.
Day 3 - Deliberate Attack -
Day 4 - Rest Assault troops, Continue to Bombard others Units
Go to Day 1

If you have enough troops you can stagger your assaults...

After the Day 3 Attack Disruption will be in the 70's. Day 4 Disruption drops then when youstar5t with Day 1 Disruption will be around 50 Day 2 Disruption in the 20's then at the start of Day 3 before the attack, disruption should be in the teens.

This is how it works ideally. All depends on recovery from disruption/fatigue and disablements among combat engineers however, and these depend in turn on support, supply, and leaders' inspiration.

[RUPD3658]

Previous deliberate attacks had failed so I figured a shock attack was needed. 2 day turns did come back to bite me but that is the fun of them. Troops are recoving nicely (most are close to 2X supplies now) and reinforcements are on the way. Should be good for another attack in a few days.

Defenders only lost 9 Vps or 108 squads in the 2 days of shock attacks. In the next two days of bombardments they lost the same amount.

I guess I should be happy to have training targets for my airforce for a few more days. [:D]

I sent Kenny an alternate turn with a deliberate attack so i will post the results of what that would have been when I get it back.

[tsimmonds]

I never look at the points lost for LCUs until the base falls and the defenders surrender....[;)]

[veji1]

RUPD, what is the difference between now and late 42 or early 43 that allows you to be optimistic ?

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

Didn't say the land routine was perfect.......but complaints like this tend to showcase more the frustration players feel when their plans don't go smoothly. I'll say it one last time and then i'm done....i'd never shock attack a level 9 urban center that still has supply

You can argue the casualty count....you can then turn around and complain about the autosupply routine and curse the dev's name, but none of that changes the fact that it was not a wise player decision.

So what to do? He deliberate attacked dozens? of times. Always with the result of not being able to lower the fortification. Can you tell us a wise player decision?

I said before that I wouldn´t attack either and I got the exact same situation in one of my late PBEMs. But it still is ridicoulos that you conquer a whole country (that´s ridicoulos in the case of China too...) but 300.000 troops in the capitol getting unlimited auto supply and can therefore defend until the end of time.

So the best thing is to place 4000 av in Chungking to make it a stalemate because he will also "never" be able to drive me out.

Just curios do you really think (besides the fact that conquering China would be impossible) rupd´s situation there is okay? It´s okay for you that 300 ? supply is enough for 250.000 troops to hold out that long? There are enough logistics around here so perhaps someone could tell you how much supply is really needed to a) be combat ready and b) not to starve.

So if everything isn´t perfect but "okay" why do we have this result then?

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

well actually several players have come with some interesting land tactics that have born fruit. Treespider came up with a good rinse and repeat method of attack, and a long time ago, a clever player discovered that you could use engineers alone in an attack (the others bombard) to reduce forts without suffering those upteem casualty counts when the fort level is very high. (The con of that tactic was that it quickly wrecked the ENG unit(s)....some also felt it was a "gamey" move)

Well, I´m of those who consider that gamey too... You wreck perhaps a dozen engineer units but got the fort level completely down. [8|] Have seen that often enough. Now the question: Why should a single eng unit be able to lower the fort level but the whole 400.000 men army with dozens of eng units not be able to do that.

Gamey? Weird combat routine? Or what? [:D]

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: castor troy

Just curios do you really think (besides the fact that conquering China would be impossible) rupd´s situation there is okay? It´s okay for you that 300 ? supply is enough for 250.000 troops to hold out that long? There are enough logistics around here so perhaps someone could tell you how much supply is really needed to a) be combat ready and b) not to starve.

Given that he shock attacked a Fort level 9 position that wasn't totally starving.....yes, i'm ok with it. The casualty rate can be debated as being excessive though i've explained (several times now) that Japanese LCU's tend to suffer far greater casualties in the shock attack vs. a typical Allied unit. Often it's due to firepower differences. Here, you could sum it up to the Banzai....which was usually costly. (frontal assaults often are....but esp so in the Japanese case)

When Speedy "sieged" my not inconsiderably numbered force @ Bataan in our last game (fort level 8) He waited until my supply dropped to Zero, *and* then waited some more for the effects of that starvation to take it's toll (along with constant air bombardment and land bombardment) Process took weeks to months...but in the end, when he started attacking (Delib attacks i might add), my position erroded quickly and with reasonable casaulties he netted a major POW point reward.

Treespider's technique would probably help here along with rotation of attacker. There's more than one way to reduce a fort level without an all-out attack.

[DuckofTindalos]

I never, EVER Shock Attack a position that has Fortifications of above 1. Mix of Bombardment and Deliberate all the way...

[Nikademus]

a good policy though JoeW in our last game educated me on how being aggressive with shock attacks in certain situations can lead to accelerated success. But one place i'd never do it is in an urban hex with any substantial forts....esp if i'm Japanese....too costly. A modern Allied force can risk it better.

While a generalization.....shock attacks are sort of a poor man's method of reducing forts if you have no ENG unit's to attack the fort levels.

[DuckofTindalos]

I meant "Urban position"; should have said. In open terrain, you can sometimes risk it, especially if you have a goodly supply of armour. In cities, forget it... You'll achieve nothing except killing your own men.

[Nikademus]

game must be broken!

[DuckofTindalos]

Why haven't you fixed it, then?[:'(]

[Nikademus]

Maybe because I resigned in protest...... [:'(]

you fix it. [:D]

[DuckofTindalos]

I'm not stupid enough to have anything to do with land combat...[:D]

[treespider]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

Maybe because I resigned in protest...... [:'(]

you fix it. [:D]

Is that anything like biting your nose off to spite your face!

[Nikademus]

naw.....more like putting on a life preserver.