HOI3 What in the name of god is going on?

[SentinelSamurai]

Right, so I'm japan fighting in China. I have two fronts atm, one facing Communist China and the other facing the Republic of China. I decided to stop the advance at a river so i can reorganize and plan my next move.
All is going well, i've reached the river and my forces have stopped at a good defensive position, now i can plan to cut into the chinese heartland.
Good and dandy, theres no way the chinese can possibly make a counter-attack, not in these positions. BUT WAIT, what is this? My forces along the front facing the Republic of China are getting pushed back. What, how can this be?
My troops are out of supplies and are at 0 organisation so they are getting pushed back because they can't fight.
Ok...whats up with my supply lines?
And BLOOM i see that all my supplies and being funneled into the OTHER front, the one facing Communist China, and might i add are doing JACK SQUAT. Those troops haven't moved from their current positions in weeks!
Ah, ok maybe i just have to wait a bit for the game to realize that those troops have enough and should divert some where troops are OUT!
Nope, why would it do that? Its trying to stockpile supplies and fuel to the forces which are doing jack and squat. And since i have no control over the entire system i'm watching in horror, as my other front is getting pushed back province by province because my guys can't regain their organisation because they're not getting any supplies.
So here i am begging the game to figure it out as my troops are getting butchered to the right, and the guys on the left are sitting on their asses surrounded by boxes of cookies.
OK, don't panick, i'll just pull back my troops from all that HARD FOUGHT FOR GROUND, and hope the game sorts out its crap if i'm a few hundred kilometers closer to the feking port where the supplies are coming from.
YES, my troops finally got more supplies, i have to counter-attack quickly otherwise the entire right flank will be enveloped.
FORWARDS!!!
Yes! I've established the line again at the river. Aaaaaand out of supplies, pushed back, rinse repeat, guys on the left are still surrounded by boxes of cookies as the game is fixated on stock piling supplies on the front where no fighting has occured in nearly 2 months.

Great...is there something i'm missing about how the supply system works? Because the game has made no attempt what so ever to try and form a new supply line to the Rep. of China front, and continues to stockpile supplies in the other front. Or is this just a funky mechanic that just has a funny sense of humor. Any tips or explanations i will accept with glee.

 

[thexmassteam]

Hi!
Not a joke, supply in hoi3 sometimes gone mad
Check the infra, low infra/destructed infra area are bad place to hold a position.
Try to have reserve divisions with supply behind your lines, then move them to front line, the supply will be shared, it may help the time game engine realize you need supply.
Can't remember if japan have a politician with "naval bases efficiency +10%" but if it could help.
Supply wizard at all level of your OOB and max lvl at army group level will help a lot.
Take more harbours and set supply convoys (and check your convoys if you let AI manage them)
Prior to invasion, building one naval base and put it in a nice place can help, but too late for this now, but expand the existing harbour as much as you can.
Build infra, go on supply mapmod and build infra where the engine make it through (yes, it can be in that low level infra province right near this shiny high infra level province )
Supply mission with transport plane are a must have.
I don't know if it's still existing, but I've got a "black hole" bug in FTM with japan, all supply put in a single province somewhere in china, and the entire empire starving, check it.

Good luck, supply could be a nightmare

 

[StanCollins]

Another consideration is . . .How many men do you have in the area running out of supply? I routinely use 50 INF brigades (no ART, AT etc. because they use more supplies) to take Shanxi & Com.China with little or no trouble with supplies. Some will say even that is too many but I want to get it over with quickly.

 

[confinement]

Yeah, the infrastructure in China is crap, which means that the supplies are slowly crawling forward. As mentioned, loading up your corps, army, army group, and theater command with logistic wizards will help. Taking additional ports along the coast will also help.

 

[marxianTJ]

It's essential to take the ports. Even if you can make Japan much stronger in China than historically, IRL the Japanese mostly just stuck to the ports - because they realized penetrating into the interior of China was nearly impossible. In order to only have intermittent supply issues it's best to have *every* port on coastal China and try to connect as many as you can to cut down on the amount of convoy routes you have to protect lol.

Another issue is that divisions under attack draw x2 the supplies they normally would, so you'll stress the already very bad infra even more if you start fighting lol. If you notice that supply is just *super bad* in and doesn't look to be getting better, it may be necessary to strategically redeploy some troops completely out of the area (perhaps back to Dalian).

Japan also has a convoy problem at the start of the game - in that it has a lot of convoys, but *most* of them are in use - since every trade you make uses convoys, and every island you garrison uses convoys, and every bit of supply in mainland Asia uses convoys. If you've done a lot of trading you may be completely out of available convoys and so perhaps your ports aren't adequately supplied with them is another theory.

 

[AngusM]

My life was similarly miserable in HOI3 because of things like this. Then I discovered "Arcade" mode!

 

[SentinelSamurai]

Thanks for all the replies! My armies consist of mostly infantry with the various support units (arty, AT, engineers, etc.) with a small mobile force to encircle massive chinese pockets (motorized inf. with 2 light tank divisions). I run the black ice mod so my army composition is much more diverse then that but lets stay on track . Speaking of BIce, the mod changes a lot of countries armies and various other features, so i had to build up a much larger force to take down china then in vanilla, but again, concept is the same, stay on target. >.> (O btw, i highly recommend BIce, its a grea- SHAT UP stay on topic )
So my army was alot more supply hungry then normal vanilla. I checked the infra, yes, very terrible (fighting in pleb land is hard). I was moving so fast that the battle damaged infra wasn't at a state of repair so it could move large amounts of supplies again.
@thexmassteam - I had some reserve units behind my lines, but the supply situation was so bad that they ran out of supplies as well
@thexmassteam - I did improve some infra once order in the line was secure (after some frantic strategic moves)
@marxianTJ - That is indeed true i found, ports are the key to a secure and fast moving supply chain in china

So i had to retreat on the commie front because they ran out of cookies. T.T I reformed a line closer to Tianjin then landed some marines to take the 2 port cities in the wee peninsula and the port just south of it and linked up with my main line. Needless to say that solved the supply problem for the eastern forces closer to the coast but a large portion were still in the pit. So i improved the infra where the supply chain was strained (dat rhyme, rekt) and that with the combination of tracking down every technology that improves supply throughput and appointed a very competent commander (with logistic wizard) as head of all forces in china. The combination of all these, and falling back torwards the supply sources AND the game moved the primary supply source from Hamhung (a port city to the north-east of the Korean Peninsula) to Qingdao, one of the port cities in the wee chinese peninsula my marines had just captured, allowed the supply lines to recover in a rapid, and decisive manner.
Long story short, the sudden rapid advance into china freaked out my supply lines and the battle damaged infra made things only worse. Not only that, but the primary supply center was over 500 kilometers away because there was no port large enough that was closer to the front line. Once i captured the large port of Qingdao, the primary supply center was moved to a spot where it didn't have to travel over vast expanses of poorly developed infra. The significance of this situation cannot be stressed enough i found. Qingdao was like Antwerp for the allies in europe.
LESSON LEARNED!!! If you are fighting on a battlefield overseas from your homeland, major ports are vital.
So...after many tears and broken keyboards the situation has FINALLY improved and my lines are once again moving and stable.

 

[thexmassteam]

Ho, BICE .... supply is a major issue in BICE, more than in vanilla. I hope you build some security forces to keep partisan quiet