ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
Mike is traveling this week, so we won't get any turns in until Friday or the weekend. I'm using the time to really look at China. Have four possible macro strategies, each with different pros and cons, each with different levels of skill required to pull off.
Mulling.
For those interested I call them:
1) MLR
2) Atomization
3) Evacuation
3a) Evacuation and activation
Rocky has top-lined comments, but I've asked him not to get into the weeds on numbers or such; I need to learn to do this on my own. His initial comments tell me I need to dig more into base forces and their devices, and to look more at HQ structures in China. But I have an initial idea of what I'm going to do in the first three months and I can get LCUs moving on this turn toward that end. After only three days I don't know what Mike has planned for China, but I'm going to do what's right for me and this game's skeleton of no HRs. If he sits back there's nothing that can't be modified next spring.
I'm going to start executing a modified Evacuation plan to pull significant forces west toward or into India. The Atomization plan, whereby I would split the Chinese infantry LCUs up into their smallest pieces and try a "swarm of bees" supply denial approach in southern and eastern China will fail IMO. I will try to establish not a classic MLR, but a bastion plan to give me time to get the body of the force out, or rather TO, the supplies which will let them grow fat for a return in 43-44. I think strong, supplied Chinese forces on the Indian rail network could be a useful flying wedge, and take garrison duty from the Indian Army so they can use their superior devices and tanks to work in Burma and/or NE India. One secondary objective of this is to also show that no-PPs to cross borders works in more than one way.
In making this decision I've heavily relied on my own self-assessment of my abilitiy to really manage China, especially in the areas of supply, terrain, and rivers/shock rules. I've gone back and read AARs to see how various players have grown and evolved in how they play China. And I've also tried to factor in how much I have to do and learn as a whole in a first PBEM game. I concluded that trying an intricate, numbers-focused AV-fest in China is not something I think I can excel at right now.
This strategy, like all of them, has risks. It gives away base capture VPs, and some of the Chinese bases are big that way. (But surprisingly, many are not that tasty for Japan.) While it strengthens India it also makes it more complex. It puts a bit of pressure on Indian supply generation, although Bombay and Calcutta, if they remain intact, are very large suppliers. It opens up Japanese strat bombing opportunities on the western side, and could lead to another invasion route into Burma and NE India without the need to risk or use sealift. And, if I lose Chungking, which is likely at some point, it freezes Chinese reinforcements, even though they will be queued and not permanently lost.
On the plus side, it might make Mike over-confident if he sees me "fleeing", and this could lead to aggressive moves elsewhere on the board. In China itself he gets cities and VPs, but he must garrison them, and some of the larger cities eat up 30% of a division or a bit more. His supply will flow deeper into the interior, making it open to being severed when I counter-attack. And the base VPs without multipliers is not going to give him an auto-vic so far as I can tell, unless I am rolled up elsewhere on a large-scale basis. (I will build nothing in China except some Forts in selected areas.) To get the real VP bonanza he has to build up, and in that area he will have to make hard decisions about engineer deployments to China and away from the perimeter bases in the Pacific and DEI he needs to build up for LBA. Additionally, most of China offers only airbase builds and not ports, so the potential multiplier effect is lower. Finally, leaving might spare me some of the VP losses from huge Chinese retreat routs we commonly see in 1942 before they are fully TOEed and trained up a bit. I've read of too many city-based MLRs collapsing with 15,000-30,000 man losses. In many ways the cities in China are the most dangerous place to put the army given how the supply algorithms flow.
The 3a option above, Evac and Activation, is probably a pipedream, but one I will keep in the back of my mind. It is a combo of the above, followed in 1943, probably later that year, of a Chinese drive east to pin the extended Japanese forces, including presumably some of the Manchurian garrison freed by the no-PP rules, coupled with a massive Allied invasion of mainland Asia, probably at Hong Kong, by joint US/Brit/Aussie infantry and armor focused on battering up into Manchuria with a goal of getting the garrison to 7999 for one turn. A Soviet activation wins the war.
However, this would be a pure dice roll. Formosa LBA would need to be neutralized, and probably can't be without an invasion there first, which would telegraph the activation strategy. Formosa would take I estimate 6-9 months at least depending on where the staging base was and how he plays it between now and then. Allied losses would be staggering and could themselves lead to an auto-vic against in January 1944. For these reasons and others it's probably not going to happen. But I'll keep it on the board.
So there it is. China . . . can't live with it, can't leave fast enough.