How to defeat Tokyo?

[santino250]

Hi All

I stand at the doorstep of Tokyo..

I have many forces... but everytime I invade, I get destroyed... I have been using 2 Battleship TF's to bombard
for everyday for over 2 months, getting between 2 - 3,000 cas.
I tried bombing from Air, but with little results...
My Air bombing usually results in no ground losses when I bomb troops.. And I have gone in heavy..
Have tried every altitude... no luck... even nukes em several times...

I have over 1.75 million troops, and get spanked...

Any Advice??

thank you

[BBfanboy]

I hope you are not landing directly at Tokyo! All the advantages to the defender.

Land at Utsonomiya or Chiba with a couple of prepared units, take the base and then land your Tokyo-prepared troops and march in.

If you are playing with stacking limits the large number of troops you have will work against your supply. You cannot win without good supply.

Instead of numbers of troops, think "firepower" - lots of tanks and tank destroyers, artillery, US Marines and late-war Army troops.
Ensure your commanders are top-notch for land combat, leadership, and fairly high aggression (65-75 or so).

[wdolson]

Are you playing the AI? As Japan's fortunes go south, units that are scheduled to appear in various places appear in Tokyo instead if they have been captured. Respawned units also appear there. The AI also hoards supply at Tokyo, so it becomes a very tough target. A human player would probably do things differently.

I've taken Tokyo against the AI once in the original WitP and once in AE. It's very tough. I could only do it after the Russians activated and threw the Red Army at Tokyo too.

Bill

[GetAssista]

1. Bring everything! I mean every 50+ AV LCU on the map and all combat engineers
2. City-bomb every damage-able facility in there and keep all of them damaged. AI will expend supply repairing those.
3. Keep doing 2 until his heavy/light industry and refineries are no longer repairing, and get them fully damaged to prevent supply generation. It AI has supply it is nearly invulnerable there in x4 terrain with all the units re/spawned.
4. After industry is consistently gone keep bombing airfields daily and bombarding with all the BBs/CAs you have. Try to pick correct range of bombardment so that CD guns not harass you.
5. When AA fire dies out indicating that supplies are scarse, try your first deliberate attack with everything you have (blood, blood everywhere!!) then R&R, rotating your battered units out of Tokyo.
6. Keep doing 4 daily and 5 as soon as units decrease their fatigue/disruption into single digits and combat enginers replenish losses. Your goal is to drop forts 1 level in the attack no matter losses.

Rinse and repeat

There is also a cheeky exploitive unsportsman gamey shameful way against AI - withdraw all your LCUs away from Tokyo and surrounding hexes, march 1 unit close to the city and watch the horde aggro and abandon their fortified positions. Right into your waiting ambush
Another cheeky way is to keep withdrawing your units from Tokyo starting with weakest ones. Until AI decides that it is finally time for payback. It usually misjudges badly and ends up impaling itself on your defences with horrific losses.

ORIGINAL: santino250
... even nukes em several times...

ah, this one made me chuckle )

Edit: thought that in the worst case there can be millions of AI supply stored in Tokyo on Hard/VHard. There were 13 mil in my game when I captured San Francisco but that one was x2 terrain, a lot easier. So industry pummelling might not work or take a long time. Tokyo has ~15 different damageable facilities so 15k supply expended on repairs in an ideal turn (+bombings and bombardments but those usually expend single digit thousands at most). If there are a lot supplies, just deliberate attack once in a while with the aim of bringing forts down. Combat engineers are key. Keeping airfield and port damaged is another key.

[bomccarthy]

ORIGINAL: GetAssista

Edit: thought that in the worst case there can be millions of AI supply stored in Tokyo on Hard/VHard. There were 13 mil in my game when I captured San Francisco but that one was x2 terrain, a lot easier. So industry pummelling might not work or take a long time. Tokyo has ~15 different damageable facilities so 15k supply expended on repairs in an ideal turn (+bombings and bombardments but those usually expend single digit thousands at most). If there are a lot supplies, just deliberate attack once in a while with the aim of bringing forts down. Combat engineers are key. Keeping airfield and port damaged is another key.

In my Scen 6 game (I kept the difficulty level at historical for the last 2 years so I could bypass islands), the AI accumulated more than 8M supply points in Tokyo by the time I reached it in Feb '46, plus all the respawns and reinforcements (I had captured all of the other major cities). I began attacks in March but gave up after a few days - there wasn't any fun in it, and I had captured everything else in Japan (except Hokkaido) and China (except Hong Kong and Canton - no real point in wasting forces on those). I bypassed the DEI and Philippines, so I guess my next game will focus there, rather than the Home Islands.