Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: trees trees

If the Communists are still given Si-An, Yennan will be one more place for them to defend from the Japanese divisions oozing past them. I agree it should be in the game, but then so should a lot of things. When it appears on the map more people will begin to question the realities of China in WiF.

quote:

ORIGINAL: trees trees

I've been wondering if the "Silk Road" will be drawn out further?

I think Devin Culter among others has a House Rule (ut-oh) connecting it to Alma-Ata in the USSR?

The Soviets did use it to send some things to the Nationalists, including aircraft (note the models of the early Nationalist aircraft in the force pool), but it didn't amount to very much so I think ADG decided to simplify it out of the game. Having it on the map could be nice for the future.

I do recall in Tuchman's book that Stillwell was sent to Lan-Chow by the War Department to report on the volume of this aid. It does leave the impression that Lan-Chow remained in Nationalist hands as well.

quote:

ORIGINAL: trees trees

I've learned a lot from WiF over the years. Barnes & Noble would be wise to sell this game because it does spur further study. How many other wargames have a bibliography? And this thread should show you where it led my interests. I just threw that idea of no Yennan out there because realism lapses in a wargame are usually pretty glaring and reflect poorly on that game. Without Yennan is not real. But neither is giving Si-An to the Communists. It's just that the game is coming out as-is. Fortunately China is the most mysterious theater in the war, even more than Burma. With WiF people say 'Oh well, another crazy game in China, but the rest of the game is still great. Wanna play again?'

Yep. There's a common lack of knowledge about the war in China (I'm not better off), as compared with , say D-Day, even if Chinese had the longest WW2 and the second highest human losses.

How many "famuous" battles in China do we know?? This lack of knowledge might result on the fact, that war in China was the theatre with the least Western involvement in WW2.

A map thought I think I typed into a response and lost to a time-out, and forgot on the re-type:

Mapping the Wuhan area looks challenging for a wargame cartographer. iirc, 5th Edition maps put both Wuhan and Hankow (Han-chow? I forget the exact name of the other major city near-by) on the map ... in the same hex. Problem solved.

We discussed that here before: IRL in the 1930s Wuhan grew together from 3 independent cities: Hankow, Hanyang and Wuchang. It already was one big city.

quote:

ORIGINAL: trees trees

sounds a little challenging. Wosung's information that most of the Russian aid for the Kuomintang came in by sea, like the west's, makes far more sense. The existence of this bare skeleton route though can help explain the Oil option, the way China has one saved oil so Mao _or_ Chiang can re-org in a turn. I think this is what the route was used for - a minimum trickle of gasoline supply. ???

And reinforcements for National Chinese Airforce

In WiF5 I have marched on Urumchi (and defended it) but I don't expect to ever have to do that again.

regarding this:

"This might lead to an allied HQ plus LBA flying into South China Sea. Btw, the last problem allready exist by allowing allied HQ's in China to trace to India over the Burma road."

This was the Allied High Command's exact plan. There it is in WiFFe too, Stilwell HQ-I and Chinese Lend-Lease Liberators. They pulled it off, after an enormous logistical investment (Ledo Road optional, anyone? ) Then the Japanese promptly overran the brand new airfields.


I re-checked the supply rules today, pondering the Burma Road. In WiFFe you don't usually need to use it for that purpose and I had forgotten how it worked. But since it is like a railroad for supply, I still would leave Chihkiang off the map. With all the new cities, the Chinese would no longer need their HQ units so much.

About supply: Maybe with all the new cities, Chinese attack weakness should be mandatory. IRL they didn't have much of a supply train, because all the new arty was parked for the real (the civil) war. On the other hand most of the time regular Chinese Troops were not fighting, but foraging. Japanese Attacks, so to speak were unwelcomed interruptions while foraging.

There are some other aspects of supply which are quite abstracted in WIF (and I know they will be in MWIF, no question, but that's ok):

-Some supply lines were not in-being. They grew trough the war (Burma road)

-"Normal" supply needs in the different armys mirrowed different social economical cultures. Esp. US and Japanese had quite different definitions of "being out of supply".

There's well-known description of Model or Manteuffel about russian tank spearheads in 1944: Subtracting all the Nazi-dicourse about "unbelievable unorganized asian hordes" in it, on the bottom line remains: They had much less supply trail, so it's difficult to cut then off.

Here's a thought: how about distilling all the spellings and the current vs WWII names of places that we have learned from the great contributions in this thread, and include that like the way the really nice leader biographies will be included? Somewhere, someone will ask "Where's Beijing in this game?" OK that hopefully will be very, very rare amongst people interested in this game.

Good idea. This thread already contains some data. The more of all these minor changes in China there would be, the better they should be documented, proved and explained.

Maybe this can help to calm down accusations of being unwiffy or having setup "another crazy game in China".

BTW Bejing = Peking (both: "Northern Capital") = 1930s-1940s Peiping ("Northern Peace", or "Peace in the North").

Here's another tought, I know Steve will hate it: What about 2 alternative setups for China (esp. in the Northwest), maybe as an, errh, optional rule??
WIFE traditional and MWIF nano-revised??

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ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

Not for MWIF product 1. Focus, man, focus!

quote:

ORIGINAL: c92nichj
To put a bit more fuel on the discussion I did a global war setup in the current beta version of the product, it does not include patrice new terrain and cities but the number of hexes are the same so the picture does show the counterdensity pretty accurately.

I did not spend an awful lot of time tinking about the strategy of the setup, it is just to give you all a flavour.

quote:

ORIGINAL: c92nichj

To put a bit more fuel on the discussion I did a global war setup in the current beta version of the product, it does not include patrice new terrain and cities but the number of hexes are the same so the picture does show the counterdensity pretty accurately.

I did not spend an awful lot of time tinking about the strategy of the setup, it is just to give you all a flavour.

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ORIGINAL: wosung
I'll be offline for about three weeks. So you guys here have all the time to set up Mao HQ in Bratislava or elsewere. No, just kidding.


So far I enjoyed this forum very much.

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In my four PBEM games of CWIF China was killed or nearly killed in three of the games, the typical startegy can be seen in the picture below. In onegame the chineese army was encircled and put OOS outside Chang-sa, and the japanaeese could preyy much ignore it and just walk around it (we were playing with the isolation option).

quote:

In onegame the chineese army was encircled and put OOS outside Chang-sa, and the japanaeese could preyy much ignore it and just walk around it (we were playing with the isolation option).

quote:

ORIGINAL: lomyrin

I agree with you that in CWiF China falls or is severely mauled more often than not.

But, the first winter is coming and CWiF issued 2 Communist Mils to start. In the winter Japan will be slowed down in speed and attacks. The Chinese forces will have some time to build up.

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Lending resources and BP's can also assist China even if Chinese attack weakness is used.

The proposed map with the extra cities and warlord additions should also help to cost Japan more losses and to slow down their advances.

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Having to expend more effort and BP's for the China war ought to make Japan a little less formidable against the USA later on. I have come around to think this is good, in CWiF Japan has been very strong in the Pacific in my experience with CWiF. past and present.
Lars

quote:

ORIGINAL: c92nichj

quote:

ORIGINAL: lomyrin

I agree with you that in CWiF China falls or is severely mauled more often than not.

But, the first winter is coming and CWiF issued 2 Communist Mils to start. In the winter Japan will be slowed down in speed and attacks. The Chinese forces will have some time to build up.

In the winter you launch your southern offensive, wher it is good weather. In the north you stop the attacking but walking forward in the snow works well, the chineese are in no position to counterattack anyhow.


Yes, the normal Japanese operations are indeed to attack in the south during the winter, your setup seems to be almost entirely against the Communists in the north.

Lars

(in reply to c92nichj)

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ullern, Incy, Shannon, you might review post #357 and vote for the rare ones you have not voted for yet (who were in the latest additions, such as Kaifeng (hex E of Chengchow), Wuhsing, the Treaty ports).

Yohan, you have only expressed "NO" votes for 3 cities (Anking, Ningsia (was Yinchuan), Sining), would you mind completing the review and vote for the others too, so that you don't have a negative only impact on the statistics ?

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1140817&mpage=12&key=

We reached about 10 voters.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
To make your life easier, I agree with all of Borger's votes except one - (the man's a genius, he agrees with me!). Why he got that one vote wrong I do not understand: Hengyang - No.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
To make your life easier, I agree with all of Borger's votes except one - (the man's a genius, he agrees with me!). Why he got that one vote wrong I do not understand: Hengyang - No.

I take that this is for the votes you did not express already, because you diverge from him on some cities for which you voted some time ago : Ningsia, Sining, Suchow, Yennan (you already said NO, he said YES)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Yohan

I have one comment for those who discuss CWiF as part of the analysis on MWiF for China. It is flawed. The game was flawed and there is no where enough statistical data to make a valid analysis.

Patrice, I think it is time to draw a line in the sand and call the map with hte current votes. Let the play testers have at it.

Steve, not sure if you are interested but based on the divergence from WiF FE perhaps you should pull together a group of 4 playtesters to just test China/Jap (and Russia) on the new map.

I think there may be a few volunteers here...