Land combat, how best to do??

[wild_Willie2]

Hi, I have been playing scen. 15 now for the first time as the Japanese, and find it rather difficult to find the right tactic in combating the Chinese. If you have massed enough assault points, enemy units just withdraw without to many losses. Now I have a few questions about ground combat:

What is the best tactic to eliminate ground units?, I have already read that encircling an enemy unit will cause it to be destroyed when withdrawing. But what kind of units can be used best for the encirclement?. The logical answer would be armored units, but do armored units really have an movement advantage over non armored units?. And what is the effect of artillery on your assault points, does it give you a bonus?.
IS ground combat nothing more then counting assault points and deriving casualties from that?. I also have a question about the effect of morale, disruption, experience and fatigue. Do these numbers have an influence on the “assault” value of an unit, or is the assault value just derived from the number of men that an unit can use in an attack?.

Is combating the Chinese just getting al your divisions out of Korea, Manchuria to mass assault points and hit them time after time again?

I am also concerned with using my bombers in the ground attack role, the effect of these attacks is often very small, and every time your bombers fly these not very efficient attacks against enemy units they risk losing pilots!, and japan can not afford to lose a single pilot on non efficient attacks, because replacements pilots are VERY RARE.

comments on these subjects would be more than welcome......

[pauk]

ORIGINAL: wild_Willie2


IS ground combat nothing more then counting assault points and deriving casualties from that?


I THINK IT'S JUST one of the parameter for ground combat. Surely it's better that you have big advantage in asault points then your opponent, but remember that you will need (in most
cases) eng. units (if you attacked fortified cities). But if you can have a big advantage in assault points and your units are fatigued and disrupted, your units will be hurt very badly!


I also have a question about the effect of morale, disruption, experience and fatigue. Do these numbers have an influence on the “assault” value of an unit, or is the assault value just derived from the number of men that an unit can use in an attack?.


I'M NOT SURE ABOUT this question. But i think it's no essential question for ground combat. You can easily check this in your little test. I had situations when i suffer great casaulties when i attacked with big disruption and fatigue, so i aviod this if i can. If i think that my opponent also have understrengh and fatigued units in the hex, then i attack. But...

ACTUALLY, one more thing is VERY important. It is supply. Dont ever attack without supply!


FOR THE BOMBING ground units from air. Use your bombers in great numbers. It seems to me that more bombers in attack, the lesser are ac casaulties. (just like in UV)

....

[tsimmonds]

And what is the effect of artillery on your assault points, does it give you a bonus?.

...

I am also concerned with using my bombers in the ground attack role, the effect of these attacks is often very small, and every time your bombers fly these not very efficient attacks against enemy units they risk losing pilots!, and japan can not afford to lose a single pilot on non efficient attacks, because replacements pilots are VERY RARE.

Naval Bombardment, Artillery bombardment, and Ground Support air strikes are similar in effect: each results in the temporary disruption of relatively large numbers of squads in the target units. A particularly effective bombardment can result in the effective combat strength of the target unit being reduced to 0 during that assault phase. You don't see this unless you carefully watch the assault resolution (and you have to watch enough of them to get a feel for what is happening as you watch the numbers change). This effect can often be decisive. The affected units will recover from this disruption very quickly however, mostly within a day. Bombardments do have other more permanent effects (killing supplies, disabling/destroying squads, increasing fatigue over time) but these are not significant unless you can keep it up for many days.

[erstad]

ORIGINAL: irrelevant
You don't see this unless you carefully watch the assault resolution (and you have to watch enough of them to get a feel for what is happening as you watch the numbers change).

Is there any way to just watch the resolution of ground combat, and not all of the other air, naval, etc. battles?

[Bradley7735]

Irrelevant,
Can you extrapolate on what you said about watching land combat. I have never watched that set of animations and brought any useful knowledge from it. What should I be looking for? Can you watch it and decide whether bombardments, deliberate or shock attacks are warranted in the next turn?

Thanks, bc

[Mr.Frag]

Absolutely, you can also see all the bonuses being applied as the effective combat strengths arec altered as it runs through the combat ... you can clearly see whether you can up the odds to a Shock Attack without committing suicide. You also get a good feel for when to continue bombarding because it is still too tough a nut to crack.

[Kwik E Mart]

ORIGINAL: Mr.Frag

Absolutely, you can also see all the bonuses being applied as the effective combat strengths arec altered as it runs through the combat ... you can clearly see whether you can up the odds to a Shock Attack without committing suicide. You also get a good feel for when to continue bombarding because it is still too tough a nut to crack.

I feel like I'm watching cascading code from the Matrix when watching the ground combat resolution. You guys are speaking in tougues or maybe you are all Mr. Smith's [&:]...how do you know which bonuses are being applied? I see the numbers change, but how do you possibly understand WHY they are changing? am I missing a line or two in the resolution screen that explains what is happening? do I take the red pill or the blue pill?

[pasternakski]

I have the same problems Kwik E does and can only add that the shifting numbers displayed for such a short period of time tell me nothing of substance in terms of how they inform the combat odds or outcome. I know from previous discussions that there is a "wild thing" element built into the calculation, so I don't pay a lot of attention to this aspect. How many times, for example, have you seen 2-1 attacks take a major base while, elsewhere, a 6-1 attack that reduces defense fortification levels to "0" does nothing but run up attacker casualties in excess of defender losses?

The best information I get, particularly in the big, important battles, is the enemy's exact unit composition (and, to a degree, relative unit strength). I find bombardment attacks to be the perfect substitute for the sorely lacking "recon" function.

[CMDRMCTOAST]

ORIGINAL: wild_Willie2

I also have a question about the effect of morale, disruption, experience and fatigue. Do these numbers have an influence on the “assault” value of an unit, or is the assault value just derived from the number of men that an unit can use in an attack?.

comments on these subjects would be more than welcome......

The numbers most definetely have an influence on assault as well as defensive
capability.
You will notice a value in parenthesis next to your squads, these represent
incapacitated troops who will not be fighting, the higher the numbers the less
defensive and offensive capability you have, if in Malarie zones you will never
get those numbers back up and will need to send them to larger bases for RR
and replacements, pulling troops off the line if possible and replacing with fresher
troops will continue the fight or prolong the collapse of your front.
Buying time is one of the most important aspects of the allied strategy as
well as stretching out their supply lines.
The chinese have large numbers of troops and if you use them well you
can bog down the japs all over the place and stretch their supply lines to
the limit while starting to encircle them if possible.
also once you rotate troops off the line and rest and replace them you
gain combat hardened troops who later on will be pretty tough to beat.

[yabba]

I'm glad someone has finally brought up the topic of encirclement. How, is it possible to encircle a unit(s) in this game? I would like to know? I have tried many times to get units encircled to destroy them with no change at all. If there is a way please share it.

[tsimmonds]

Can you extrapolate on what you said about watching land combat. I have never watched that set of animations and brought any useful knowledge from it. What should I be looking for? Can you watch it and decide whether bombardments, deliberate or shock attacks are warranted in the next turn?

When the screen first pops up you will see the current unmodified assault values (AV) for all of the units in the hex. These AV for any single unit might be different from the AV you would see looking at the unit info screen, particularly if the unit was the target of an air or naval bombardment during the current turn. The disruption caused by such attacks can quite often result in what you might consider to be your most powerful unit present, displaying an AV of 0. Now the LCUs bombard each other, and as they do so the various AVs are adjusted for disruption; this is what is happening when you see the AV of each successive LCU in the list tick down by a few points. Then, the actual assault phase starts, and the AVs are modified for terrain, HQs, leaders, experience(?), morale(?), fatigue(?), planning, and fortifications (the question marks are because I'm still not for sure yet whether these modifiers are applied at this stage or whether they were applied at the very start). This is where you see the big jumps in AV, this is where the Japanese Imperial Guard division goes from around 400 to over 1000. These are the values that are compared to determine the combat odds.

At least this is what I have fooled myself into believing. But believing that I know what is happening makes me feel good, whether I actually do or not.[;)]

A bombardment by LCUs is always appropriate. But unless you have a major preponderance of force in the area, save your big air strikes and naval bombardments for turns in which you will actually assault. If you make a big bombardment and don't follow up with an assault in that same turn, you are wasting most of the effect you achieved (temporary disruption of the unit that was bombarded, typically the most powerful unit present). That is a waste of supply and of wear and tear on materiel.

The defender, by application of well-timed bombardments or air strikes, by means of the resulting reduction of the AV of some crucial attacking LCU, can play havoc with otherwise well-planned assaults.