Japan AI not invading US West Coast

[Buta69]

The Japan AI will not invade the west coast of the Americas, including Alaska, no matter how dominant it is in the Pacific, including having taking all the islands. Have tried this out a few times. They will even try to invade from the east coast but not the west! In one game El Salvador had joined them, but the Japanese attack plan on the Panama Canal from El Salvador was to ignore the west coast and go all around south America to invade from the east!

 

[Aerinys]

Been running into this problem myself while trying to improve the quality of the Pacific War via modding.

I've been able to get them to invade Alaska via various tweaks, but they still utterly ignore the West Coast no matter what I've tried so far, and are constantly starting/canceling a plan of invading Florida from Hawaii which they have no means of executing due to lack of range on their naval superiority.

 

[el nora]

Yes, I've noticed this myself when leaving the naval treaties as USA.

I think it might be because they cant reach any Pacific port with their navy and don't feel confident in launching a naval invasion without naval support.

 

[Paul.Ketcham]

The thing about invading Panama around South America is a broken game mechanic that pops up with naval invasions, since 99% of the time they only border one seazone (and thus you don't notice) but those which border two can only be invaded from one particular side. Panama and Gibraltar are the most spectacular examples of this problem (you can only attack Gibraltar from the Med, meaning an Atlantic attack has to go all the way around Africa).