China Primmer: Chapter One

[el cid again]

There are four sources of supply in China:

1) Resource centers

2) Heavy Industry centers

3) Free supply generation points (representing either fishing or light industry)

4) The "Burma Road" rule (500 points per day at Kunming if the Burma Road is open = free of enemy units or ZOC)

Put that way, it sounds like these are different: in practice they are usually combined, so a single location often has more than one
of them. Further - the more you have hard of the place - likely the more important it is in terms of aggregate supply generation:

places like Peking, Nanking, Chunking, Kunming and Shanghai are very important. So are several others - all of which you should recognize. But the important one is Wuhan. It is a "triple city" in RHS - it is in the heart of China - it is not held by one side - and it is at the junction of the interior and exterior river systems. All of this is true too - it IS a triple city - three walled cities at the junction of several rivers - it IS a deep water port (or part of it is) for OCEAN ships - and it is a major regional resource and manufacturing center. In many respects, the fight for China is (or ought to be) a fight for Wuhan. IF you control it - you have a strong logistical foundation with airfields and ports in the heart of China.

The rest of the important points are controlled by one side or the other - and this breaks China into different "micro economies." Each area can function by itself - but the more areas that link by rail or road - the better the larger area will work in terms of supporting operations.
That means that the real goal of military operations is - or should be - the LINKING of these points by rail (or road = secondary rail) LOC.
Ships can move supplies in rivers. They can even move units (if NOT assigned to China commands - so units load) - and fast - but they are NOT the same thing as a rail or road link - which is automatic and - in terms of resources and oil - completely unlimited in capacity. If a micro economy is large enough it has enough oil and resources for its HI to work - and it will work well. If not - you can import the missing thing (oil?) and it will still work well. At start there is enough oil stored for production to go on for a significant time - and some areas produce more.
Theoretically one can connect rail lines to Russia or Indochina (secondary rail in both cases) and gain resouerce/oil shipping automatically as required - into or out of China - and this creates the potential for a vast area to be managed by AI. It was also a wartime priority of Japan to do this - but only technically was it achieved (never practically) - and then only between China and Indochina.

Players can tell where units are in supply - they are bright - and not - they are dim. If a unit is not bright - it is susceptable to severe problems if you isolate it from supply sources. Putting any ground unit on the LOC between such a unit and its supply source means - in a short time - it will lose when attacked. While this is not different in kind from WITP as a whole, in China there are some variations:

1) Chinese units regenerate every 30 days. This means China can afford to risk or actually lose units. In the case of a unit that must be lost - it may as well die cutting a LOC.

2) China has units in numbers that are more or less INDEPENDENT of supply requirements. The "weak" guerilla units work superbly well - better than ever I hoped - and they are not like other units in supply terms:

a) ROC units will - if not fighting - grow to 2/3 of full size

b) Red units will - if not fighting - grow to full size

c) Both ROC and Red units will grow to full size faster than other units do - and gain supply sufficient to fight well faster than normal units - IF they have a regular supply source.

d) Unless there is no retreat these units virtually never die and their morale does not depress like normal units do - because they have more supply even when "cut off" from it

This makes guerillas ideal for intel gathering - any hex they are in reports to you details of the enemy - and for LOC cutting.

Their limitation is they tend to become static - they eat locally and don't do so well on the move - but they will become mobile if attacked.
WHEN mobile - move them where you want them next.

3) China has a lot of terrain - swamps, mountains, blocked hexes - and it has only a few LOC - so the combination of where you can move well - where you cannot move well - and where you defend well - can be integrated with where there is supply to form a few practical options - and any strategy made outside this is probably very impractical and doomed to fail.

4) China has three major river systems - Yellow (interior only) - Yangtze (interior and exterior) - and Pearl (exterior only) - which matter a lot for supply and rarely for unit movements. Sometimes you can surprise the enemy with use of these river systems - which may permit unexpected points to be stronger logistically than happens using automatic LOC movement - and rarely you may be able to move troops down them (but troops not as effective as those in China commands would be). Naval units on the rivers are vulnerable to air strikes - but not as vulnerable as you might think - and they tend to survive for some time even if engaged. Sometimes air units don't engage them - and the units on the rivers are robust - they have many durability points (meaning many small vessels) - so they don't disappear very easily.

[el cid again]

Supply tends to flow towards UNITS of the same side. Resources and oil tend to flow toward Heavy Industry - or to ports. Supply also flows towards HQ - and in particular toward the top China HQ for each side. Placing of this one HQ makes a great deal of difference both in terms of where its command range is measured from and in supply terms. Units are measured in terms of squad count or aircraft count - so the larger the unit - the more supply it "asks" for.

In China many supply sinks are not separated but are organic. Thus you have the "Reformed Army" - which is a so called "Japanese puppet Army" with few heavy weapons - but lots of support - support being the main thing a supply sink is made of (mainly because a support squad counts only 1/10 for squad count in combat). Both integrated and separate supply sinks are static - and they are IDENTICAL to all other units in terms of how code sees them. Since they are always located at important resource centers - which in China also are manuafacturing centers - and since they will not move - they tend to insure the important points are attracting supplies - even if no other units are present.
The main difference between an organic and a separate supply sink is that the former are smaller, and more combat effective for their size (not being subect to the horrible commander - litterally a guy with 0 ratings - nor the bad planning - of a separate one). A place like Nanking, Peking, Kalgon (the Mongol Army is there), are not undefended even when undefended - because of the presence of integrated sinks with large but low quality static military units which indeed defended those areas. When such a point is captured, the sink or sink plus military unit both have engineers that insure a major amount of damage is done - so the resource centers and industry will not be fully productive for a long time.
[They repair one point per day, at best]

Best practice for both sides is to base air units on supply source hexes which also are airfields - and the very best of these also have supply sinks in them. The air units will tend to be marginally functional even in short supply situations- because units "share" what they have - and the larger the sink the more it has to share. Under pressure the sink will be disabled a bit - and then it will eat less - so a slightly greater fraction of the supplies will go to the air or combat units in the same hex. That is, the relationship is dynamic - not fixed - and it favors the player with co-located combat units and supply sinks. Such units not only get more supplies, they get support and are more effective in construction or combat.

Successful operations in China often go to combined arms attacks - where air units attack land units that are isolated in the same turn ground untis attack in the same hex. If there is a retreat path, low morale Chinese units will tend to retreat rather than stand. If there is no retreat path they will stand - until they surrender.