Conquering Japan?

[alexvand]

So in the game I'm playing it's N/D 1943 and the Japanese navy has suffered a series of defeats. It's not completely gone, but the Allies now have sufficient LBA to control the South China Sea. Japan is still capable of contesting the China sea and perhaps launching an effective raid or two if the Allies aren't careful.

However, I'm wondering if going for direct conquest of Japan might be the best course. In the past I've always taken the time to reduce every Japanese unit on the various pacific islands, but this time I've been trying to bypass them in the hopes that a quick collapse of Japan would allow these garrisons to be taken relatively easily later. This has led to Japanese units scattered all over the place. (3 in Columbo, 1 in Singapore, etc....) At the moment there are 3 corp in Japan with one on the spiral. The only additional ones coming are the fore pool expansions and anything that gets killed.

With this in mind, is it worth it to try to conquer Japan? (I've never tried before.)

If so, how does one conquer Japan?

[Centuur]

All Japanese units depend on getting supply from the motherland. That means that they are out of position if supply is cut. They can't move anymore. So go for operation Olympic. Get ashore in force anywhere on the Islands. Four corps isn't going to stop you, if you have the capabilities of putting a large number of corps ashore in Japan (at least double, with a huge airforce attached in a couple of impulses time). The goal here is to make the Japanese start doing desperate things. They need to get more units in Japan and to do so, they need to pass your navy (and that's not going to be easy). Invade where the Japanese haven't got a defense force and where there is room to get your forces deployed. If they ignore you, start moving and destroy factories. With your navy you can get shore bombardment in a lot of hexes, so defending Japan is really, really difficult (and almost impossible, especially when the Japanese hasn't got a lot of oil saved in the homeland).

Those garrisons can be bypassed, or attacked whenever the US or the CW has the forces available to do so. Usually, the demise of the Japanese goes fast (especially when China is still around and the USSR starts moving into Manchuria).

[paulderynck]

Even when the conquest of the home islands goes well, you need to give some thought to Manchuria, Formosa and Korea. These can all become the JP home country (in succession, even). It is often better to leave the last factory(ies) in a city in Japan untaken and use the fact all their units on the Mainland are OOS to conquer those minors first.

[michaelbaldur]

or just go for the automatic victory cities