Overview
Tojo shot first and sunrise invasion can be done together in a natural way. This guide will give you the information I struggled to get without having to struggle like I did! How legit is that?
The ins and outs of it all.
1. Start with the focus Army exp Law. You will need this Army xp to change over your div templat to 7 inf with support arty and eng platoon. While doing this, you MUST spend your 1st 40 political power on declairing war on the Philippines. Doing it this way will keep world tension very low. The US will defend them. World tension will only grow to around 12% when the US joins. This prevents them from joining the Allies and gives the US less time to build up. Start the war ASAP. You dont want to waist any time. The next few steps will tell you what you should do during the build up to war.
Also, work on building military factories, focus on military / industry tech, produce more ships for the main navy fleet, inf equipment, arty, support equipment, and have 1 factory in naval bomber and naval fighter. Continue your focus by following the right path after going for Army exp Law. This is to give your army a boost. Once you do that just go down the normal focus tree as fascist Japan but do not create or join any factions.
2. Change over about 15 div to the cav template. split them into 2 groups. One for island port guard and one for the main island port guard. You want to guard every island in the Mariana region and the island in the China sea. (PS, when you can, change over the 6 cav units to 5 inf units to save equipment)
3. The rest of your remaing army will all be the inf div template with 7 inf units with arty and eng support. Split into 3 groups. one with 10 div. Plan a naval invasion from the most northern port you have with this group of 10 to the west coast of Alaska. IMPORTANT. Give this group the general with the leader trait “out of supply -50%” They will need this to get to the port in Alaska and fight off any US forces. Train them up untill they have the 25% bonus.
The final 2 groups will be split even. Give these 2 groups leaders with few or no negative traits. Train more div untill you have at least 2 groups with 24 and the one group with 10 div.
4. In the Mariana islands, you want any extra aircraft you have to perform missions there. Either air cover or naval strike. Remove all your aircraft from china and Japan and use them here. Just be sure your aircraft carriers still have aircraft in them.
Split your navy into 2 gropus. One small navy with 40 ships. Give this group only 1 battle ship and fill up the rest of the group with smaller ships. Give it a decent mix but at least half will be destroyers and subs. The larger group will keep the rest of the fleet. The larger navy will search and destroy in the Mariana islands zone. In most games, the US will send its navy to slug it out here. There will be a few small battles but in time there will be a major battle. This battle will knock out much of the US fleet. This is what you want. The smaller group will run convoy protection in the North Emperor Chain, Bering Sea, and Sea of Okhotsk. This group will protect your units as they invade Alaska. Even though this group is small, the US does not send large groups up north. More so when they lose alot of their navy in the Mariana islands zone.
While all of this is set up and going on, be sure to send your naval invasion to Western Alaska. You can also have your main fleet guard the Western North Pacific after the major naval battle. After taking Alaska, plan a naval invasion from Alaska to the west coast. Move your other units to Alaska while the naval invasion is building. By the time you send the invasion, you should protect the rout with the smaller navy like last time. Also, the rest of your army should be making its way over to Alaska. Dont wait till you take the port on the West coast to start sending the bulk of your army. Once youtake a port on the west coast, rout the bulk of your army to the west coast port. Be sure to protect your army with both the large and small navy.
5. Once your 1st group lands on the west coast, give em space and rush to take a 2nd port ASAP. Once you do just stay put till the rest of the army gets there. After your army is ready and lined up, start to push while trying to cut off US forces. Kill as many as you can. Move your main navy over to guard the west coast and have your smaller navy guard more div coming over to the US. Push as fast as you can to take all the west coast ports. Once you have them all and you have at least 60 div, push east. If everything goes good, the US will have a weaker navy than you and a smaller army. Push while trying to cut off more and more forces. If the US focused on its navy and not its army, they will fall pretty easily. Sometimes they dont send their navy out to fight and keep it in port while building a large army very fast. In this case you can still win but it will be much harder. If the US goes the normal rout and sends its navy in to fight you at the start and does not build up its army fast, you can annex the US before the end of 1938. If the game goes until the Allies go to war with the Axis, the US will join the Allies and this will get very hard.
Side note, you may want to protect the 1st 2 ports you get. Sometimes, the US will naval invade their own coast line.
6. Now that you have Annexed the US, the hard part is done. Dont worry about Asia unless you feel like it. Just focus on getting nukes now while starting a new war on Mexico ASAP. Just take out Mexico using the US Southern boarder. After taking Mexico, help the Allies take out Hitler. This will be much easier because your navy will have no problem protecting convoys. Once you take out the Axis, just take at least 1 coastal state and you are done with the Sunrise invasion achievement.
7. Here is the boring part. Just keep playing untill you get a nuke (taking on China can fill this time). Once you do, let the US go. Dont make it a puppet. Just let it go. Use Mexico as an airfield. Go to war with the US and nuke them. Because they were Annexed, they never built up their atomic tech so there is no way they can get a nuke before you. Just let them go and go to war. Drop a nuke on them and you are done.
I hope this works for you. Maybe not the 1st time but this does work. I have pulled it off a few times and this is pretty much how I play Japan world conquest games now. Have fun!
