Taking Fortified Islands?

[Faeelin]

How, exactly, am I supposed to take this back?

I have four carrier task forces, submarines, destroyers, and tactical bombers desperately trying to sink convoys around the islands to starve the Japanese out, but the four hundred thousand men they have ensconced across the islands are apparently being supplied by Chronospheres.

 

[kjd22c]

Heck, just make sure you keep those convoys from arriving, and eventually you'll starve them out. That many divisions should be a massive drain on their logistics. Just make sure you have convoy raiders in every sea zone, and let 'em wilt on the vine.

 

[blue emu]

Why exactly do you want it back?

There aren't any VPs there, or even any Air or Naval bases... just ignore them and start invading islands that MATTER (Air and Naval bases).

If you really do want those islands back, just convoy-raid until all of Japan's convoys are sunk (shouldn't take too long), then Logistical Strike the Infrastructure down to zero, then Interdict their ORG down to 5 or less, park fleets to prevent island-to-island retreats, and invade.

 

[Faeelin]

Heck, just make sure you keep those convoys from arriving, and eventually you'll starve them out. That many divisions should be a massive drain on their logistics. Just make sure you have convoy raiders in every sea zone, and let 'em wilt on the vine.

But how do you keep them raiding in one zone? When I try convoy raiding, the fleets keep moving about.

 

[Smut Peddler]

all you need to prevent movement between the islands is a single ship (eg 1 destroyer unit or sub) in each sea zone between the islands. The rest of your fleets can destroy transports, which will be in multiple sea zones (and the reason that your fleets will move seemingly at will).

This will not be a short operation, either. I just finished a game where the US landed 160 divisions in Nigeria, and (as Italy) it took me 2 years to finally destroy enough of his transports to reduce their supply (this with 8 wings of NAV, 6 carriers, 3 BC, and scores of other ships).

 

[unmerged(141364)]

Take out the base from where they're being supplied.

 

[blue emu]

Take out the base from where they're being supplied.

That requires taking every port in the Japanese Home Islands.

 

[unmerged(141364)]

It's just a couple islands, you can do it.

 

[unmerged(54081)]

Just put all of your fleets to convey raiding. Japanese don't have a lot ICs and can't afford keep up with convey building.

Looks like these 4 islands are supplied from 2 depots. Just click each island to see WHICH islands have a supply depot, and then assign your fleets convey raiding neiboring sea zones.

Don't worry that ships move from one place to next. They will not destroy evey passing-by conveys but eventually they will reduce Japanese convey pools to 0. The troops on islands have at most 2 weeks of supply. After that, their ORG will decay to 0, attack with 1 division will defeat them. Or, even better, their strength will reduce to 0, and they will simply disappear.

So, just keep convey raiding, you have a lot of ships.

 

[qwertyuiop2]

Or leave them last. One nuke per island can done everything.

 

[JRHINDO]

Or leave them last. One nuke per island can done everything.

Nuke Hawaii? You Heretic!

 

[qwertyuiop2]

Ιf he wants the island so much , why not?

 

[Eugenioso]

first, like everyone has said, start convoy raiding parties. submarines are great for this.

second, if you have nav bombers, use them as well to attack either convoys or ships. your pick. your tac bombers can be used to attack the logistics of the island (if you have any) , or to interdiction them (to reduce org). if you have CAS, attack the divs directly. if you have strategic bombers, use them to destroy the infrastructure of the islands (if there's any)

third, if youre gonna go for starvation, keep pounding their asses with airplanes, and keep the enemy convoys away.

fourth, if youre going for a landing, make sure you have marines to avoid the nasty negative modifiers for more than 1 or 2 divs. landing at the same time. set your cruisers/bc/battleships to shore bombardment while you do it to help you out.

other than that, its more or less all you can do (short of nuking them lol, youre not that desperate i hope)

take into account that okinawa and iwo jima took a long time for them to fall, even though the islands were quite small.

 

[Smut Peddler]

second, if you have nav bombers, use them as well to attack either convoys or ships. your pick. your tac bombers can be used to attack the logistics of the island (if you have any) , or to interdiction them (to reduce org). if you have CAS, attack the divs directly. if you have strategic bombers, use them to destroy the infrastructure of the islands (if there's any)

Stacks as big as the ones shown in the screenshot have incredible AA capibility; interdiction or ground attack missions will result in you losing all of your aircraft in about a week. Logistical strikes, however, involve exposing your aircraft to a much lower level of ground fire, and as such you can conduct this kind of mission for months on end with no ill effects.

In large stacks of divisions, there's no point in attacking the units directly. Use your aircraft to destroy the roads and convoys, and let the lack of supplies do the work for you.

 

[Eugenioso]

if i may suggest so as to ignore that puny ass island...

4 example, as Japan, i already have all of china and their allies after a grueling 4 3/4 year long campaign, and USA, Phillies have declared war on me.

after i took over India (not hard at all with total 100 divs ), my fleet of nearly 120 ships of all kinds (8 aircraft carriers, like 20 CVL's, many battleships, cruisers, DD's, etc.) began invasions of the islands high on Rare materials and oil (very vital for japan) when a freak landing in Okinawa by 6-8philipiness divs captured the island. after trying to bomb them (strat bomb, logistical bomb, ground attack, interd, to no effect)i went for the bomb the convoy plan, but after 2 months of siege the supplies just kept getting past my massive fleet like they werent there, and yes, i did set them to convoy raiding. my airplanes were also very unsuccessful in killing convoys.

so i just said "to hell with that shithole island" and went straight for their island, took it in a little over two weeks, and left a small garrison to protect it.

now, no new supplies are reaching them (they have no bases to send supplies from), but i cant annex them either due to them having Okinawa which has 1 VP.

the whole point of this is to tell you to just bypass it. if its a vital island, do everything in your power to get another place from where to launch further invasions.

failing all that, you could nuke them.

 

[unmerged(70654)]

How, exactly, am I supposed to take this back?

I have four carrier task forces, submarines, destroyers, and tactical bombers desperately trying to sink convoys around the islands to starve the Japanese out, but the four hundred thousand men they have ensconced across the islands are apparently being supplied by Chronospheres.

The biggest problem in HOI2 is that you don't actually starve ANY units out until there is not enough convoys in the pool to accidentally put the island in question out of supply. This might sound confusing.. so let me try to clarify.

If you sink ships headed to those islands... the units on the island do not become out of supply, because the game assumes that if there are enough convoys left in the pool, they will be supplied anyway. The units on the island are not technically supplied by the convoys leading to them, but at the end of the day a calculation is made to determine if enough convoys could reach it.

So.. in order to starve out a particular island you need to destroy all the convoys.

In HOI3 the system works logically - you can actually starve out particular places because convoy lines actually determine if somewhere is supplied. i.e. if you destroy 10 convoys headed to Okinawa, those 10 convoys don't arrive, and the units do not recieve 10 convoys of supplies.

The real question is, how do you attack a beach like that when its attached to the capitol, most impossibly of which is attacking the mainland end game USA? The easiest solution is to invade a nearby neighbor and walk your armies up, but if you are FORCED to attack a beach with 15 defenders, its virtually impossible. Possible "theoretical" way of success:

Logistical strike to lower the infastructure to 0% - this makes it so the enemy org does not regain faster than you deal damage.
Interdiction (not possible in case of invading mainland USA)
Coastal bombardment
Dozens of waves of back to back marine landings with the most up to date artillery, the theory is that you will deal more org damage than they will regain daily, and you will eventually overcome them. This is just a theory because it would take so long to take the beach that the enemy would bring many more divisions of reinforcements to the province in question before you were able to capture it (in order to minimize this possibility, logistical strike of all nearby provinces too)

 

[Smut Peddler]

So.. in order to starve out a particular island you need to destroy all the convoys.

Exactly right, good Call.

 

[person_12]

Simple Approach

The easiest most cowardly option is ask for peace and hope for the best!