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If that is the amount of damage he did after a cross river shock attack it is safe to assume he is totally out of supply or fully in reserve......

I think he is out of supply, as most troops there are either pushed back to the city after some beatings, or are troops that where already destroyed and are now being put back in the game.

but I am hesitant of launching an attack just right now
I want to clear the northern part near Kienko first.

I prefer to keep the lines closed, and keep him trapped at the city, in my view, I want him static in the city, and at some point capture the city.
I am sure at the capture some units will still survive and fight on, but then it will be deprived of the 600 supply each turn
I rather have my forces on one point and free up a few divisions to use in other theatres as well.

we will see how the situation is when I launch my first attack on the city in force.
lots of armor present and heavy arty is doing around 300 casualties in damage each turn.
airpower adds to the total and suppresses the units more.

Even the airfield keeps at 100 damage and is not being repaired each turn, even when I am not bombing, so I think he has units in reserve.
My bombers fly at 2000 ft to bomb, and so not take losses.

I need 6 to 7000 more VP's to win early victory in 43.
no idea what a dead or captured Chinese soldier is of value in VP point system (I think it was 6 to 1 in the manual)
Anyway, around 550.000 Chinese are ready for the kill, some on the run south , over 200.000 at Chungking.
The good thing is, these VP's are permanent not like bases that can be won back.

Sushi restaurants are opening in all major cities in China.

Sushi is just returning to China. It was originally discovered in Thailand as a way to preserve fish that made their way into rice paddies and were left high and dry when the paddies were drained. Farmers found that packing the fish in cooked rice would preserve them for many months. The rice got all funky, but the fish was preserved. The practice spread all over Asia and eventually made its way to Japan. The Japanese modified the practice and started eating the fish fresh packed with fresh rice but the practice of preservation died out all around Asia.

What I learn driving around on the weekend with NPR on the radio...

Bill

LOL

Excellent Bill!
I didn't know it was from Thailand.

My understanding of the VP system is that you get the points for destroyed devices, not individual soldiers. In this case the devices are squads, infantry and support, and you get one point for each Chinese squad destroyed. Note that an intact infantry squad is 13 soldiers, but when you inflict disablements on the unit some of the disabled squads will have fewer soldiers in them, so the number of squads you could destroy is 550,000 divided by a number less than thirteen. About five would be my guess (support squads are mostly smaller than infantry squads). So you could get an enormous number of VPs here, but you lose a lot of VPs for each destroyed Japanese device (6?).

ORIGINAL: Alfred

1.  AE left untouched classical WITP's code on retreat/surrender/banzai of LCUs.  Practically every "official" utterance on this issue predates the release of AE.  On 29 April 2009 wdolson gave the most detailed AE statement on this subject, essentially that AE was SAIEW, and that date was a few months before AE was even released.

2.  Any player who says that one must always leave a retreat path is simply wrong.  Ditto for anyone who says one must always totally trap the enemy in a base.  The correct approach depends on the specific circumstances and what is the major reason for fighting that local campaign.

3.  In game terms, technically no one fights "harder" just because they are trapped.  The combat algorithms are not altered to assist trapped units survive longer.  All "nationalities" labour under the same combat algorithms.

4.  The retreat/surrender/banzai conditions are a post combat outcome involving a different set of algorithms.  Here there is a difference between player 1 (aka Japan) and player 2 (aka Allies) with regard to surrender and banzai (see following point).

5.  In the linked thread I provided I tried to make it clear that Japanese LCUs do not surrender as easily as do Allied LCUs.  This is very much intentional and was referred to as the "Japanese Banzai/no surrender rule" on 20 May 2004 by Nikademus in classical WITP.  At the time Nikademus was the point man on classical WITP bug squashing.  He would refer legitimate bugs back to the land coder for rectification.

Alfred

That's what I thought.

For your #2, I also agree. It depends on what you want to happen. Since there is no incentive in terms of combat odds for leaving a hex side open vs. closing them all, which has always been my working knowledge when giving this advice, I have been advising that all hex sides to Chungking be closed.

It's going to be a long siege. Months. You want every last man in the city fighting the defenders. You could force the Chinese to retreat into the open, sure, but it won't affect when you take the city at all. The only thing leaving a hex side open for that length of time is going to do is leave open the possibility of a Chinese "escape" that you will need to guard against, however minimally - which takes troops away from the actual combat effort of the siege itself. And then once you take the city, you have to spend time chasing them down and killing them. Time better spent moving your troops somewhere else where they can be useful - because you're probably now entering your defensive phase. Plus a small amount of extra supply spent because you'll have to do more attacks against them as you chase them down (which costs more supply than just feeding your troops), when the Chinese units would've just surrendered when the city fell anyway.

ORIGINAL: Cannonfodder

If that is the amount of damage he did after a cross river shock attack it is safe to assume he is totally out of supply or fully in reserve......

They have to have been in reserve. Even troops out of supply would've caused more damage than that. Not the entire stack, but it looks like a significant portion was not fighting.

is that a bad omen? can he get his troops into a descent supply level with troops in reserve?
on the other hand I can sneak attack and take the city as well [:D]

ORIGINAL: Marshall

is that a bad omen? can he get his troops into a descent supply level with troops in reserve?
on the other hand I can sneak attack and take the city as well [:D]

He'll have the same supply problems regardless. The only (good) reason for him to put troops into reserve is to protect them from your ground bombardments, as long as he is sure that you aren't about to attack when he might need them in combat mode to prevent a poor result for him.

Well, this reserving already robbed him off the possibility significantly ruffing you up in a shock attack. You can try play this tendency of your opponent further, like try deliberate attack with a part of your forces, then on the next turn attack with another part to catch him offguard and nibble on some more fort levels
Dividing your troops in 2 parts attacking in turns is adviceable anyway because tanks tend to rest more quickly than IDs and can take part in all attacks, while IDs need take turns.

Edit: dividing in later stages of siege of course. First attacks will be brutal and should be made in force

dp