A problem...why always a shock attack vs British in Singapore

[Semachus]

Hi all...my friend and I have fired up the game with the newest patch and we are playing the sleeping China scenario starting December 7th. I am playing as the Japanese and my friend as the allies.
The problem...it is now February 7th, 1942, and again for the third time..moving troops into the Singapore hex has my forces making a shock attack. I had them on move only. I had them before on combat and the same thing happened.
The allies have about 53,000 men located in that hex.
Is this an anomaly? Should I just ignore Singapore and keep a force right outside and send the remaining troops to perform other operations?
But then that is not really correct or makes sense.
Any suggestions. In this latest move..almost 5000 men were lost.
Thanks for you help.

[Bullwinkle58]

You are attacking across a river hex.

[bartrat]

Move across river hex into occupied by enemy is automatic shock attack. It is in the manual on page 190.

[dr.hal]

Remember except for a narrow causeway (which the British blew up) Singapore is an "island" and the water that separates it from the Malaysian mainland is pretty wide, certainly can't walk across.

[LargeSlowTarget]

Singapore is an island divided from mainland Malay peninsula by the shallow Johore Strait. In game terms Johore Strait is treated as navigable river - thus crossing it to gain Singapore island triggers a shock attack.

Edit: Beaten to it - but I have to cheer the French almost constantly - what a game!

[czert2]

since reson is now descibed few advices - after shock ataxck is done (and foothold estabilished -so you need to keept units in same hex) shock aatck will no longer occur and you can normaly recover your unith strengh before final assault/shelling .
bring as many as artys you can here, it will help .
if philipene falled, you can take some units from there. bad think is that singapure is heavy minned/gunned othervise combined assult : river crosing+amhibius+bombardement will be great combo. With this combo i sometimes maanged to destoy enemy unist which otherwise retreaded if done only 1 thing (mostly river crossing).
And go for capping of singapore - bad luck if you allowed enemy to retreat with all uniths there, and didnt cuted off them and destroyed separatly.
You dont only remove very significiant base from enemy (nice vp from capturing+destoying army), posibly with some naval units destroyed if lucky), you will get here nice supply proding base, with very important think - shipyard - after expanding no need to send ships to home islands for repair, it will save a lot of fuel and time - and at same time you force enemy ships to find shipyards for repair in more distant ports. And due to size of singapore port you can rearm any ship there (well mayby except yamato - but can be done with some extra naval suport)

[tigercub]

you will need 30% of the AV they have or thing like that across the river to stop another shock attack trigger! when moving in again.

[czert2]

that was allways puzzled me - once you archive bridgehead on enemy hex, and you will send in another units, that you have shock attack again - why ?
in theory - all these reinforcment should be moving via secured roads to allready secured bridgehead. After all, after d-day +x days these new units were no longer under fire from germans.

[wdolson]

Actually I remember the discussion behind the reason and why I was instructed to do it that way. The idea is that you need a certain level of force on the far bank of the river before the bridgehead is wide enough they don't come into immediate contact with the enemy as soon as they get across. If the enemy forces are strong, the first few waves are going to struggle to keep the beachhead perimeter intact.

A lot of percentages were kicked around and 30% was what we settled on. In the old WitP, every unit crossing a river shock attacked, no matter how much you already had there.

It's imperfect. I don't recall if we have any randoms or not in the percentage. There are differing situations where the force needed might be higher or lower. For example elite enemy troops would be more likely to punch holes in the line and threaten the beachhead. On the other end, capturing a bridge intact would allow a lot of troops to pour across the river more easily than if they have to use assault boats and later pontoon bridges.

Ultimately it is what it is. It's better than WitP, not as good as it could be in an ideal world.

Bill

[pharmy]

actually not always, bridgeheads are provided for in the game : page 190 in the manual
Moving
across a River hex side will also cause the crossing unit to initiate a shock attack unless the
moving side has a presence of friendly units that are already in the hex that meet a threshold
of strength when compared to the non-moving side.

Edit - sorry did not notice the 30% post 3 above me

[pharmy]

Bill is that 30% of AV or troop numbers?

[geofflambert]

Bringing more troops in from a separate different river hexside should be auto shock attack regardless of what you already have there (through other hexsides). Is that the case? Do all friendlies participate?

[czert2]

so if you have 30% (+- RNG) of av, then any newly ariving unit will dont triger shock assault at all ?
and if they have less than 30% - so no "buletproof" bridgehead, have units there reduced supply movement to simulate need to cover from enemy fire/losses from it ?

[rustysi]

ORIGINAL: geofflambert

Bringing more troops in from a separate different river hexside should be auto shock attack regardless of what you already have there (through other hexsides). Is that the case?yes Do all friendlies participate?AFAIK only the units that trigger the shock attack will participate. That's not to say that you can't include others in the hex by setting them to SA also.

Ok, so I haven't been here much lately to participate as I've been spending my time to check out a couple of AAR's to see if I can improve my game. The two (from the Japanese side) I've been checking are Cribtop v Cuttlefish and Mike Solli v tc464. I recommend any JFB check these out. I've been having same problem with conquest of Singers. Cribtop advocates going in hard, 3500 AV to get a 1:1 attack which will help mitigate heavy losses during a SA (this is even mentioned in the manual). This is a big commitment of troops, about 7 divisions. Also to reduce losses make sure your divisions are combined into full units, and that they're not lead by some hack Colonel (often occurs when you combine a unit). When I read that in the AAR I checked my divisions and found I had two... oh, well more PP's spent. Hope this helps.

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: icepharmy

Bill is that 30% of AV or troop numbers?

Sorry, I don't remember now. I believe it's 30% AV and there are not many modifiers.

Bill

[castor troy]

ORIGINAL: wdolson

Actually I remember the discussion behind the reason and why I was instructed to do it that way. The idea is that you need a certain level of force on the far bank of the river before the bridgehead is wide enough they don't come into immediate contact with the enemy as soon as they get across. If the enemy forces are strong, the first few waves are going to struggle to keep the beachhead perimeter intact.

A lot of percentages were kicked around and 30% was what we settled on. In the old WitP, every unit crossing a river shock attacked, no matter how much you already had there.

It's imperfect. I don't recall if we have any randoms or not in the percentage. There are differing situations where the force needed might be higher or lower. For example elite enemy troops would be more likely to punch holes in the line and threaten the beachhead. On the other end, capturing a bridge intact would allow a lot of troops to pour across the river more easily than if they have to use assault boats and later pontoon bridges.

Ultimately it is what it is. It's better than WitP, not as good as it could be in an ideal world.

Bill

IMO that new rule is as good as it could be. One of the really great steps forward from WITP. Now if we could just have that rule for big island invasions too... instead we have to prep troops for 3 months+ to send them as reinforcements to an invasion where we already have 200,000 men fighting the enemy because every unloading on a "hostile" island is seen as landing under fire

[Numdydar]

Interesting. I never had to do this when invading as Japan after the bonus runs out. Once I land the initial forces (assuming they outnumber the defenders) any followup can land without getting attacked. By LCUs at least. CDs are another story [:@]

Now if you mean fire from CD guns as your 'landing under fire' then I do not see that as something at needs to be changed much. If your troops are being attacked in the land combat phase, then that has nothing to with landing under fire.

Even in the real war landings came under fire with varying amount of success until the island was almost cleared (except Okinawa of course). So I just accept it as holdouts in a difficult place to capture with some kind of AT gun or better.