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NeomerArcana

Corporal
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Oct 29, 2017
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I'm playing as Nat China. After Marco-Polo I had a brief war with Japan, then took peace. I'm busy uniting the other China flavours now whilst building up an airforce.

Because Japan is overseas on mainland China, are they taking supply from their ports? Or from Mengkukuo? Because of the way our short war went, Japan has a small isolated section of territory in my north east, it's not clear to me where they're getting supplies.

In any case, let's say they get supplies from a port, is it possible to determine which port? If it is, and I bomb it down to nothing, will the route change? If I instead bomb infra around the port province, will they cha ge the route to a different port?

Basically, I'm interested in making their supplies suffer here on mainland China in order to expedite the coming renewed war (I plan on DOWing them when I'm finished uniting).
 
Considering the chronically awful infrastructure in China overall, I would whack the infra back to zero in the best infra provinces, so that it will bottleneck and not reach their front lines in the necessary quantities (which already happens all the time to Japanese in China even when China does nothing to cause it). That would be easier than bombing the ports flat. However, I believe there is a relationship between land infra and repair rates, including of land infra. So that suggests to me that if you bomb a port's infra flat, then bomb the port flat, if there had been any supplies, they're not going anywhere soon and the port should be out of commission a while. I suspect they would find another one, but if you screw up enough of the land infra, you'll make a bad thing worse for them. Just don't do it if you're going on the offensive, lest you inherit your own exacerbation of the problem.
 
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If
Considering the chronically awful infrastructure in China overall, I would whack the infra back to zero in the best infra provinces, so that it will bottleneck and not reach their front lines in the necessary quantities (which already happens all the time to Japanese in China even when China does nothing to cause it). That would be easier than bombing the ports flat. However, I believe there is a relationship between land infra and repair rates, including of land infra. So that suggests to me that if you bomb a port's infra flat, then bomb the port flat, if there had been any supplies, they're not going anywhere soon and the port should be out of commission a while. I suspect they would find another one, but if you screw up enough of the land infra, you'll make a bad thing worse for them. Just don't do it if you're going on the offensive, lest you inherit your own exacerbation of the problem.
If I bomb infr I figured I'd do it on the port provinces, not along the front. Like you say, I don't want to inherit the problem.
 
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Because Japan is overseas on mainland China, are they taking supply from their ports? Or from Mengkukuo? Because of the way our short war went, Japan has a small isolated section of territory in my north east, it's not clear to me where they're getting supplies.
They get their supply from the ports in Japanese-controlled territory, and only from Mengkukuo in the territory of Mengkukuo. The same goes for Manchukuo.
I would also note that one province, usually a port, will function as the central overseas supply hub (similar to the capital when not overseas), targeting this particular port with log strikes will likely eliminate far more supplies than hitting the others. Port strikes in themselves will reduce the amount of supplies that can be delivered through said port, so reducing all of Japan's Chinese ports to rubble is also a good way of ruining their logistics, but you would have to keep doing it, and a strategy that combines hits on port infrastructure with log strikes on the supply hub will be more effective.
 
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We're talking about this one the other thread . The Japanese supply depot is in Hamhung. But the supply is also "made" in cities with IC. The more IC , the more each city makes. There's several cities with IC in Japanese Korea. All comes across via land on those korea/China border provinces. Check the resources map and the enemy supply cities show up as green provinces.
 
IC is "produced" in any province with factories, but it appears in the country's capital and must be shipped out to the various troops, ships, and aircraft. There's no way to see an enemy's supply depot or supply lines (although you could tag-switch to that country if you really want to know), but Hamhung is the port where practically all of Japan's supply arrives from the mainland. I strongly suspect that all of Manchukuo's supplies are sent to Hamhung, and then sent back from there to Manchukuo's own units as well. Of course, any isolated pocket will have its own supply hub (at a port, if there is one), and may possibly have other ports feeding it, but that's not visible to an opposing player.

Note: if tag-switching to another country, DO NOT start the clock while running that other country. The AI can undo hours of player effort in under a second, and on the one occasion where I habitually hit the <space bar>, it triggered things I did not want triggered, broke my most essential trade deals that I had spent months setting up, put a handful of useless units into my production queue, and sent a disturbing number units scurrying to opposite corners of my country for no apparent reason. Ultimately, I had to reload to an earlier save, because it wasn't entirely fixable. Save BEFORE you try it. To err is human; to make 100,000 mistakes in under a second takes a computer.

Bombing the main ports should reduce the supplies received, but bombing the Infrastructure of wherever the supply hub happens to be should destroy a significant amount of supply. The problem with those approaches is that Japan can bring far more supply into its enclaves in China than the infrastructure will support further inland, so you're not hitting the actual bottlenecks. BEFORE Japan takes provinces, you might note where the lanes of improved infrastructure are just inland of the ports, so you can hit those after Japan occupies them, cutting off the units beyond. A capital and its surrounding provinces have unlimited throughput regardless of infrastructure level or damage, to prevent bombing a circle around the enemy's capital and leaving their entire army out of supply, but supply hubs do not have that immunity.
 
Oops my bad. Supply does not spawn in those Japanese IC in Korea as they are not land connected to Toyko. However supplies made by Manchukuo will indeed spawn in their own three IC cities, in proportion to their IC size. See wiki.... https://hoi3.paradoxwikis.com/Logistics_reference

That means supply IS built in Mukden by Manchukuo quite near your border. Try watching the start game as Japan or Manchukuo and watch where the supply runs.

Either way, whichever version you believe it seems unlikely you are going to have the range to bomb Hamhung anyway. Others have said that Japan will just switch the supply hub? I don't know?

Perhaps the surest course is to log bomb the paths west of Mukden as they are in easy reach. At least until your lines move closer and you want that infra.
 
Oops my bad. Supply does not spawn in those Japanese IC in Korea as they are not land connected to Toyko. However supplies made by Manchukuo will indeed spawn in their own three IC cities, in proportion to their IC size. See wiki.... https://hoi3.paradoxwikis.com/Logistics_reference

That means supply IS built in Mukden by Manchukuo quite near your border. Try watching the start game as Japan or Manchukuo and watch where the supply runs.

Either way, whichever version you believe it seems unlikely you are going to have the range to bomb Hamhung anyway. Others have said that Japan will just switch the supply hub? I don't know?

Perhaps the surest course is to log bomb the paths west of Mukden as they are in easy reach. At least until your lines move closer and you want that infra.
This isn't the initial Marco-Polo war, that happened, I took some territory and then had peace. I've now unified China so I'm looking toward Japan. It's 1941, and I've been working on keeping TAC up to date. I have built some transports, but unfortunately no other navy. My plan now is to try an amphibious landing on/around Dalian. There's an airstrip there that looks like it's close enough to Hamhung for me to kill the infra.

Of course, if they just reroute supplies the whole plan fails.
 
Of course, if they just reroute supplies the whole plan fails.
The supply engine will reroute the supply lines around provinces which cannot carry the full load, BUT there are only a few infrastructure "highways" of mediocre capacity through the even worse provinces between their depot and their front lines. You can't stop ALL supply, but you can force it through provinces which can only handle a fraction of it. Each additional province that it has to pass through adds another instance of supply tax, which adds up over distance, particularly when the main supply corridor has been wrecked and it spreads into a wide blanket.

The good part of bombing a single province down to 0 is that it takes close to forever for it to recover (since repair speed is related to that infrastructure level), but the bad part is that the game may just bypass it, or supplement it, if/when the level becomes lower than that of an alternate route. It won't shift the depot location, however, unless the opponent takes another port and the game engine decides that it's a better choice than the current depot location.
 
The supply engine will reroute the supply lines around provinces which cannot carry the full load, BUT there are only a few infrastructure "highways" of mediocre capacity through the even worse provinces between their depot and their front lines. You can't stop ALL supply, but you can force it through provinces which can only handle a fraction of it. Each additional province that it has to pass through adds another instance of supply tax, which adds up over distance, particularly when the main supply corridor has been wrecked and it spreads into a wide blanket.

The good part of bombing a single province down to 0 is that it takes close to forever for it to recover (since repair speed is related to that infrastructure level), but the bad part is that the game may just bypass it, or supplement it, if/when the level becomes lower than that of an alternate route. It won't shift the depot location, however, unless the opponent takes another port and the game engine decides that it's a better choice than the current depot location.
Thanks for the help everyone.

The amphibious landing in Dalian failed. I simply don't have a navy to protect the troops. As Nat China I put no research into any capital ship types and my domination of espionage has unfortunately not netted me any of those techs.

Bombing the infra behind the Japanese I decided not to do. I knew it would just impact me when I try to kick them off Korea. So, in the end I abandoned all plans to starve them of supplies. The war continues.
 
I understand your reluctant to bomb Japanese infra as you want to advance over that ground later. One option of course is to hammer the lines and crush the out of supply units or push them back. Then use a planned stop at the poor infra and rest yourself while your infra recovers and pick another Japanese logistics line further back to hammer. Meanwhile build a forward airbase during that pause with the reach for Hamhung?

Plan B. Looking at the start of 1936 (I'm using FTM 3.062b but your view may be different, so check). The dozen Japanese divisions on the China front are drawing a "need" of little over 24 supplies from the direction of Mukden. You could log bomb any part of that path to 0 infra. But the AI will just reroute the supplies along an adjacent path ( ?). All infra in that area is min 3 already and shows a throughput of 72 supplied, so rerouted paths don't hit the supply much. I guess a throughput of 72 can support around 30 divisions. Extra divisions just mean adding an extra path to the line, and adding an extra province to the path only costs a pittance of 0.05 supply ( ie 70.05 instead of 70 supplies).

So my plan B is to hit the known path in several places, but not enough damage to reduce the infra that the path requires change. You would actually be targeting where you know the supplies are rather than the infra itself. Mukden is the obvious choke point as with an infra of 6 it has a throughput of 288. Keep hitting Mukden so its infra drops to 3 and no further should mean you are shredding the supplies coming through without altering the path. Other options are Benxi (6) to the east and Liaozhong (5) and Fuxin (3) which are closer. Obviously hit the smaller and closer infra ones less so they can repair quicker by the point you need them.

Think of it like using machine guns on the supply trucks but not bombing the bridges they use.
 
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I am sort of surprised the Japanese interceptors haven't shredded your airforce. Every China game I played I gave up on flying anything other than surrender flags within their air range. Pretty sure thier base at Dalian would put Interceptors over anything you might want to hit with Tacs.
 
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That would be a good reason, yes, but only if it could be held in force and in supply. I fear the IJN would reduce any convoys to their constituent atoms fairly fast. The Japanese army then attacks an out of supply expeditionary force which has nowhere to retreat. It would be a Dunkirk but without all the annoying boats and evacuation stuff.

Such cunning maneuvers work well if you have overwhelming force in all critical regards, but can result in jaw dropping defeats otherwise. As happened to my Army Group Palestine. Th pride and joy of the British Empire. Which got wiped out. But we won't talk about that. Yes, better to forget all about that staggering defeat. In fact it never happened. No. Not at all. What were we talking about? Oh yeah. Taking Dalian. With naval supremacy its a good plan, however I am of the opinion it would be going a....

A BASE TOO FAR!
 
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For what it's worth, my interceptors have managed to keep all bombers from leaving Dalian airfield for the most part. My own TAC bomb the enemy unhindered.

So far, I've pushed the front back and cut off a large pocket of Japanese troops. In hindsight I'm guessing maybe 100k troops. They are out of supply now, so just mopping the remainder up. The front itself is a bit hit or miss.

I've made several landings in Indochina. Just took Bangkok. The fighting in the jungles seems quick, I've taken all the Japanese ports. Somehow my landings were faster than the Japanese naval response.

Though I did notice Japan has taken Midway, so perhaps they were preoccupied.

My goal now is to take Indochina and siam while holding the Mengkukuo front. I think more resources would be more valuable than more Chinese cores.

BTW. I redeclared war on Japan after they joined axis. I am unaligned. But I need to ask for peace from Germany. Peace with Germany gives me "impossible". Is there anyway to get peace without going all out? I set wargoals to conquer Siam and take Indochina from Japan.
 
You have made playing Nat Chi sound interesting. Will have to try that again sometime.

I'm curious as why you need peace with Germany, as I thought they'd be too far away too interfer with you short term. What's the plan?

As a solution, can you not pause, ask Ger for Peace then tag switch to GER and accept it. I know these things don't always work as one thinks?

(If that makes you at peace with JAP, try tag switch to JAP and have them declare limited war back on you)