What next
This post is a mixture of a response to comments and a quick précis of my thoughts so far. The action isn't going to restart for a while as I have to prepare a full set of situation reports and plans for the next phase. Currently we are in late summer, no too late for further action but not early enough to justify a new "summer" campaign. Bear in mind that action south of the equator has reversed seasons so the "summer"/"winter" issue is a bit mixed in our current active locations.
I have declared the summer campaign a failure but this is perhaps being a little unfair. What I needed was a decisive campaign that succeeded in comprehensively destroying the enemy armies. This didn't happen and in that sense the campaign was a failure but it was an expected failure. I have achieved the geographic manoeuvres I had as objectives it’s just that the bag was a little smaller than I wanted. Also, at sea things have not gone particularly well and the naval campaign is definitely behind schedule compared with what was intended.
The current situation is characterised by a land campaign that ahs run out of steam as it runs into the south China mountains. There are basically two alternatives, one is to withdraw and defend with space and air power and the other is to try to clear southern China as well. In both cases I need to maintain the great pocket in western China and ultimately eliminate the enemy forces there.
Here, in no particular order, is a list of some thoughts I have had. They are not all compatible with each other but each represents a desire to achieve a certain objective.
1. I have built quite a few new brigades but have no way of effectively reorganising what goes where due to the brigade deployment restrictions. Also, my forces are almost all at low org levels. I am tempted to carry out a mass withdrawal for reorganisation (Desired brigade distribution will be supplied in the army report). It is also tempting to withdraw parts of the air force for upgrading and recovery.
2. I have a severe partisan problem, occupied territory problem and issues with deploying new units. To address this it would be highly beneficial to annex Portugal, Britain and Russia. These three countries have limited further VPs and annexation is practical. Actually launching a campaign to capture these remaining VPs simply to allow annexation seems a bit weird. It is clearly not realistic that capturing Vladivostok would make that much different and why the population of the UK would even know, let alone care, about a handful of islands in the Pacific is beyond me. If I did pursue such a campaign then the raid on Vladivostok and the UK Pacific islands might be exciting but they are ultimately rather weird so I am proposing so “adjustments” (see below)
3. It is quite clear that my strategy is “indirect approach” as I am not engaging the main body of the enemy army and cannot hope to do so in current circumstances. Therefore it is perfectly clear that I should adopt a list of secondary targets for conquest. The current list is as follows.
a) Clear Africa
b) Annex Australia
c) Annex New Zealand
d) Annex the Philippines
e) Acquire further island bases around the Chinese and Japanese coast
4. Naval operations are in some difficulties and clearly need some focus. They are traditionally treated as a supporting role with the real naval objective being to land troops or support land operations. With the current state of naval superiority I need to allow naval operations to prioritise defeat of the enemy navy and as such I devote significant supporting resources. Up until this point in the game I have skirmished with the enemy navy aiming to inflict losses at the least possible cost to my forces. This must now change to a serious attempt to actually defeat the enemy navies and develop naval superiority in this theatre.
5. I have serious questions about the best policy with regard to the west China pocket. I currently estimate there are about 120 divisions present and they are already losing strength from being out of supply. I have already decided that I am not going to dedicate significant forces to crushing this pocket – it will be dealt with by waiting. Having decided this there appears to be an interesting but rather exploitative option – what if I wait for the units to be massively damaged by being out of supply and then allow the Petal Throne to recapture the key province of Qamdo? The follow up is to wait for the units to be reinforced and then cut them off again. The basic idea is to exploit the ineptness of the AI to drain substantially more manpower from the Petal throne reserves. I am uncertain whether this really qualifies as an exploit or just a clever/stupid plan. Unfortunately it seems to have elements of both clever and stupid. Its just an idea.
6. Further operations in China offer a range of possibilities.
a) Defence by air power – this makes maximum use of air power and gives it excellent opportunity for inflicting enemy losses
b) Heavy offensive in the south – this will make the Petal Throne supply position as bad as possible with convoy lines running fairly long distances.
c) (a) plus collecting a large force for a raid into Manchuria aimed at inflicting casualties. This depends on forces reserved for operations elsewhere.
7. It is tempting to aim at a long-term objective of creating a position which requires the absolute minimum of defensive forces. This requires the capture of the west China/Tibet area to establish secure supply lines for the north and south. Achieving this provides maximum flexibility in future operations as I could conceivably leave the entire continent undefended.
Collapse of the UK
This is a custom event to cover the events resulting from the near total dissolution of the UK armed forces and the fact that remaining UK territory is not being defended by the UK. It gives Asian territory to the Petal throne and remaining territory to Australia, USA and Canada as appropriate. If nobody objects to the idea then I will trigger it with a formal post in the AAR.
Collapse of Russia
Exactly the same issue as the UK except I will make sure the Petal throne has claims to its new territory, as some of it is quite valuable.
In both cases these event are needed to persuade the Petal Throne armed forces to make a sensible effort to defend the relevant territory as Burma and Vladivostok represent undefended localities within the current situation. Also Germany annexing the rest will remove the Petal Throne reluctance to attack into it. This has been the main reason I need so little defence along the Chinese border. The collapse events will remove the “ownership” issues which are currently confusing the AI.
