Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: wosung
From Nanning to Changsha there should be no railway, just some sort of "Highway".

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There should also be a "Highway" from Nanning to Canton.

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The rail line Hanoi-Nanning should end just before Nanning. And be exchanged by Highway.

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Perhaps one should delete all the highways in China anyway. Better not to substitute them by railway, as sometimes has been done in wif maps. Long distance transportation in China WAS a mess. But then the Japanese would get problems with transporting ressources by land. So at least delete most of the connections between Inland provinces (Yunnan and Sichuan) and costal China. Provincial modernization in KMT-Hinterland just slowly started bout 1935 as ressource and armament centre and as Chinese "Alpen fortress".

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ORIGINAL: wosung

Depends on criteria: little Chengchow should be deleted for the far more important provincial capital Kaifeng (just the hex right of Chengchow, at the railway line).

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The distance between Nanking and Shanghai seems to be too long.

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The rail between Hangchow and Nanchang was not completed (1935), also the one Changsha - Canton. Not sure about 1939.

The Rail between Nanchang and Changsha was not even projected in 1935.

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There should be a "highway" from Chengtu-Chongking-Kweiyang.

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But not one from Kweiyang to Changsha. The route Kweiyang - Kunming is debatable, because it was built, as much infrastructure in Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces in wartime.

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Much of the traffic was by river.

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ORIGINAL: Froonp

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My suggested changes to what you propose are:

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China Coast - remove Hefei and Su-Chow. They are not needed for Chinese supply when counterattacking.

The main reason to add Hefei & Suchow (why do you spell it Su-Chow ?) were to give back the map the "City battle" feature that the WiF FE maps had.
The coast has a lot of cities, and on the WiF FE map there is nearly 1 city in each hex you want to advance. Adding those was to make the area more like this, you see ?
Moreover those cities are already conquered by Japan, so they do not add an US Entry roll.

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North China - remove Baoji, Yinchuan, and Sining. Baoji is not needed for maintaining Chinese supply given the two other new cities.

This reduces the new, conquerable cities to 16. They all would be worthwhile taking for the conquest of China. At .3 per, the cost in US Entry points would be 4.8, which is still a little high. If need be, we could make some of the less important cities cost .2, to make it come out to an even 4 as in WIF FE.

I added Baoji feeling that it was maybe too much (with Tianshui).
Nils also asked me to remove Sining & Yinchuan before I post this to this thread, so I believe you must be right the both of you.
It removing both, I will then modifiy the river around Lan-Chow to cover it on 3 sides as it is on the WiF FE maps.
Would you agree ?

I noted down your proposals.
I'll wait further forum members comment before making changes, is this OK ?

My ability to spell the names of Chinese cities is very poor. Please ignore any mistakes I make.

The limiting factor when attacking in China tends to be that only one land attack can be mustered per game turn. Many units are needed for maintaining the front lines and acquiring enough excess units to launch an attack is always difficult. Since armor is not commonly available, even good attacks result in all the attacking units becoming disrupted. Reorganizing all of them for performnig a second attack is hard to do.

So, adding more cities has the effect of requiring the attacker to use the assault table more often. Simply placing the weakest sacrificial lamb in a city can delay the Japanese army for an entire turn. Throw in a few bad weather rolls and the China campaign grinds to a halt. Conversely, a few lucky rolls for combat (no attackers disrupted plus 2 or 3 defenders in a hex destroyed) and for weather, and Japan can roll up China with relative ease.

This is why play balance in China is so hard to do. Its sensitivity to die rolls is much higher than for other land action in WIF.

So I strongly prefer to not add cities unless there is an excellent reason for doing so. Hence my suggestion to not add those 2 (hard to spell) cities behind the Japanese lines.

_____________________________

Steve

Perfection is an elusive goal.

(in reply to Froonp)

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ORIGINAL: mycodave

Hi Guys,

My first post here (long-time lurker). I had a random thought about the Balance in China issue:

Would it be an idea to have a new terrain type - a "supply city" for use with all the new MWIF cities?
The *only* use for such a city would be supply.
Thus there would only be a check for US entry effects in the original WIF FE cities, and perhaps reinforcements could be only placed in the original cities etc. The loss of the communist capital would therefore remain quite devastating to the Chinese - the communists would remain in supply, but would have no new reinforcements until an original city was liberated.

That might help reduce some considerable playtesting difficulties...or maybe not.
If this has already been thought of, and disregarded, then please disregard the above

Cheers,
Dave

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ORIGINAL: wosung
The Names should read,

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for the north-west;
Tungkwan*

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Ningsia (like the province, itself = modern Yinchuan)
*IRL really historical insginficant small places

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for the north-eastern/ middlechina part
Hsüchow (Your Suchow, which IRL is near Hangchow)

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Yencheng (Your Xiangfan, I think)

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South China
Chihchiang (can't find it, probably really small) What about exchanging it with Kweilin (Guilin), which was an important traffic centre between the Hinterland and the coast in the "Antijapanese Resistance War"?

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And please just think about removing the "-" between the syllables, to make it uniform. Otherwise it is looking, well unprofessional. Even if this ment asking WIF god himself. Imagine 1,4 billion potential WIF customers confused, because they can't find their cities.

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ORIGINAL: lomyrin
I would add only, if any have to be added at all:
Tianshui - a veritable Communist lifesaver being a city in a mountain hex on the rail line between Lan Chow and Si An.
Baoding - provides a stopgap supply point in the north east of China.
Xiangfan - provides a stopgap Nationalist supply point in Mid China.
Suchow - a stopgap supply point of minor importance, it starts in Japanese control.
Liuchow - a stopgap supply point in southern China, but do not change the rail line there.
I think the other additions proposed are either too strong additions for the Chinese or without much importance except for adding US entry costs.

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ORIGINAL: Froonp

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ORIGINAL: wosung
The Names should read,

I suppose all the names you gave are 1940 names, am I ok ?

Yep

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for the north-west;
Tungkwan*

Is this my Tongguan ?

Yep: This is your Tongguan

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Ningsia (like the province, itself = modern Yinchuan)
*IRL really historical insginficant small places

What city on my map is Ningsia ? Is it Yinchuan ?

Yep: Yinchuan

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for the north-eastern/ middlechina part
Hsüchow (Your Suchow, which IRL is near Hangchow)

All of my WWII maps show Suchow east of Chengchow, north of Nanning. Are they wrong ?

OK, quite complicated: there are at least 2 Suchows. Different Chinese characters are pronounced the same way, thus transcribed with the same latin letters. I Checked again: Your Suchow does exist east of Chengchow, north of Nanning; 50 km south of my Hsüchow (same sized city) a.k. in the same WIF hex. Both are quite unknown places.

Problem is, I first thought of Suchow No. 2, which is one of the most famed cities in China ("Chinese Venice"), and which is near Hangchow. So it looked like a fault. Sorry

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Yencheng (Your Xiangfan, I think)

Isn't Yencheng rather Yichang, on the Yangsee river ? Can't find that Yenchen city.
My Xiangfan is on the Han Kiang river.

Sorry can't find it right now

But, maybe I should replace Xiangfan with the Nanyang city, who is on more maps, and in the same area (Id place it 1 hex Nortwast from Xiangfan).

I would go for Nanyang (bigger, better known)

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South China
Chihchiang (can't find it, probably really small) What about exchanging it with Kweilin (Guilin), which was an important traffic centre between the Hinterland and the coast in the "Antijapanese Resistance War"?

I have Chihkiang on the WWII maps I have.

See one of my other posts: It is really a small place (if that is a criteria for MWIF)

Where is Kweilin (Guilin) ? What is the 1940 name?

Kweilin (Guilin) is between Kweiyang and Canton, on the height of Nanning.

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And please just think about removing the "-" between the syllables, to make it uniform. Otherwise it is looking, well unprofessional. Even if this ment asking WIF god himself. Imagine 1,4 billion potential WIF customers confused, because they can't find their cities.

I agree, you're right.
On the modified map I'm doing, I'm removing the dashes.
Steve will decide if he removes them on the existing map, but I would vote for it, even if this is a departure from the WiF FE map.

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ORIGINAL: Wosung
South China
Chihchiang (can't find it, probably really small) What about exchanging it with Kweilin (Guilin), which was an important traffic centre between the Hinterland and the coast in the "Antijapanese Resistance War"?

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ORIGINAL: Wosung
Problem with Communist China is, that there don't exist lots of cities: poor border-country full of Mountains. Sining and Ningsia are the only additional provincial cities there. IRL Communists didn't care much about the cities then. What if in WIF the communist held Cities are conquered, are there still Communist Partisans?

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ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

For naming cities, I like going with what Wosung suggests, even if that changes what is printed on the WIF FE maps. I would want them to be names appropriate for English speakers, circa 1937-1945, and to be consistent in their spelling mechanics.

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For adding cities and rail lines, I suggest breaking the problem into the 3 geographical areas you started with. If a consensus can be achieved for one or two of those sections, then the problem is smaller.

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As I mentioned before, unforeseen impacts to the game are likely by adding these cities.

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ORIGINAL: lomyrin

Both Ankang and Chihchian are mountain cities and immediately will become very costly for the Japanese to overcome.

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For comparison purposes: The Russian areas east of Stalingrad have certainly been expanded enormously by the unitary map scale. There are large areas there that have supply problems but hopefully this will not be changed.

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ORIGINAL: Incy
I would like to keep china like that, and since we are halving the scale, we're effectively quadrupling (at least) the number of hexes. Thus, to maintain city density, we'd have to quadruple the number of cities!!. Maybe that's a bit over the top, but at least I'd like to move in that direction. China should be line upon line upon line upon line, and partisans in the rear if one advances to far...