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Ok, I bought AE and I am trying to lay out a plan for Burma - my question is how do I open the Ledo road? I look at the map and do not see any rail/road/trail link from Ledo to China. Do I march engineers to the hexes where a trail/road is needed and issue the order to build roads? I'm reading the manaul and I do not see anything about this.

I'm guessing this is no easy task as historically their was a debate whether it could be completed before any use could be made of it.

Thanks, Skipjack

15.8 Burma Road (p.254):

"For the Allies, if a rail/road/trail path free of Japanese units between Tsuyung and Ledo or between Tsuyung and Rangoon can be traced, than (sic) each day, 500 supply points per turn are added to Tsuyung."

On page 40 we read:

The existence of foot trails is assumed in all hexes on the map that do not have roads defined, and this is accounted for in the off-road movement rates. Therefore there are no actual “trails” defined on the map except for along railway lines as described here.

I take this to mean that if both Ledo and Tsuyang are controlled and any continuous chain of hexes without Japanese units can be traced between these two bases (no matter how indirect, mountainous, or lacking in apparent roads or RR the path might be) then 500 supply points appear at Tsuyang each turn.

I might be wrong, but I don't see how else to interpret the condition on p. 254 (combined with what we see on the map).

I can imagine that it would be better to exclude the "snowy" mountains as being a permitted part of the trail of hexes (except if a visible road appears in the hex) but this is not said anywhere I can see.

Thanks, I think I see now - as long as a link of bases, units or controlled hexsides can be maintained between Ledo and Tsuyung, the 500 pt supply value will arrive. I cannot see any other way to interpret the rules.

This is probably a good question to bring up on the sticky "Map, base, economic" thread in the main WitP:AE forum.  Andrew will know for sure how it works.

I think that's what the rule is, but I haven't see it stated clearly in the posts I've read. And I do think that the snowy mountains should be excluded as otherwise the implication is that you could just haul supplies over the huge mountains into China and forget routing them through Tsuyung.

But I think your statement about controlled hexsides is a better way of looking at it rather than just a "clear" path of hexes as I originally stated it.

Here's andrew's post on the topic

tm.asp?m=2203304&mpage=1&key=ledo&#2203325

As I understand this, there is no ledo road in AE

Looks like flying the hump is the only option after Rangoon falls [:(] - that is pretty historical.  Maybe it is possible to maintain the flow of supplies if Myitinka can be held. I will proceed on that premise. Thanks for the replies.

I stand very corrected!

I certainly would be nice to have a systematic errata to the manual developed somewhere.

I've read that it's supposed to be possible to suck additional supplies to China from Rangoon via the additional supply request function.  It would be interesting to know the most effective way of doing this.  Would it be enough to set the Chinese base closest to Burma to maximum request, or would that base be too far away from Rangoon to affect its supplies?  Would it be better to suck supplies to an intermediate base like Magwe or Mandalay first?

I have no bases requesting extra supply and am seeing supply regularly sucked out of Rangoon and dropped off in Chungking and Changsha. This is actually working too well, as it leaves my Burma Army short of supply. I'm thinking I'm gonna have to have Rangoon request extra supply to be able to build up supply in Burma. I've probably had over 200K supply move to China this way vs. the 60K China has received from the "burma road rule" during the same period.