I agree, the Egypt IC doesn’t happen that often. I like to use the G bomber along with the two subs to get the BB instead of bringing the bomber down to Egypt. There have been a few times that Egypt survives G1 with the FT and AR and after reinforcing the two INF from Trans-Jordan (sometimes two INF from India, when a defiant/dumb Japan refuses to sack the navy there) survives I1.
I’ve come to the same conclusion as you Zhukov44 that navy buys in the Med as germany is almost wasted money. I had some luck with building two CVs there in consecutive turns, but I also have been buying a FT with Germany every round. I’ll check out the mass INF turtle and see how that goes. With my crew’s standard US strategy of all Atlantic the extra navy ended up being easy IPC kills. With the two loaded CVs along with the Italian starting navy (most of my italy buys have been troops since I build a second TS and unload into Africa) I held off the Allies for 2-3 more turns landing into Africa or Europe. It’s an ever present threat having the 4 FT and usually 2-3 Bombers in Germany for the Allies navy. It really forces the US to build more heavy ships in the Atlantic to go with their copious TS or else the brits have to spend lots of extra cash to build a navy to beat it up. My crew hasn’t done it yet, but when playing AAA by my lonesome, a large sub buy as Britain did bad things for my CV fleet… especially when the brits got super subs…
You really like the three industry buy as Japan? I’ve been digging on the Sumatra and India ICs but I’m not sold on Manchuria yet. It seems like I could use that 15 IPCs elsewhere better. Especially given my hard Japanese push for China and India. Along with the 6-7 TS I don’t think that third one is needed. I also am a proponent of moving hard for India on J2, and having that industry buy 1st turn takes away from my ability to take and hold India. Then those fraking 7 russian INF pose a serious threat. Everyone in the clan, including myself, like to leave the 7 INF in Buryatia as a stopper. Not that it will stop Japan for long, but you at least have to make an effort to take it out.
I’ve been thinking about pushing the russian backdoor as hard as I’m doing to India, instead of india, but I just don’t see a large enough benefit in doing that. If I’m not going to get India I always get Australia on J2 so the Brits don’t get their NO. But using the Manchuria route into Russia isn’t worth a whole lot of IPCs, which maybe doesn’t matter given the obvious domination of China. But I also like the industry in India because it easily allows troop movement to Africa.
So after playing several AAA games, my best strat has been this Germany turtle, take India J2 with sumatra IC, India IC J3, 2-3 Bombers J4 and then from J5 on I SBR Russia while moving troops in there. With that in mind, Germany only needs to survive through the 5th turn before the Russians start taking some heavy damage for the rest of the game. This worked well with the FT buys as germany and two CVs added to the Med to hold off the allies for a couple more turns, bringing me to T5, T6 threshold before any serious non-russian threat to Germany. Again I’ll try the heavy INF instead of buying the CVs and see if that works as well/better.