Fleetwood Dan: I absolutely agree, stacking Karelia on G1 can be a watershed moment for Germany, even a game-winner if it holds for the long run. By the way, if suicidal British are a danger in the first round, you can always NCM a sub to SZ 3 to take that out of the equation. In my mind, it’s well worth the loss of the sub and the reduced defense in SZ 5. Long term is trickier, especially if you’re trying to hold it while also ramping up your defense in Western Europe; I’ve seen some very, very good players abandon Western Europe in order to hold onto the Karelia stack (and done it myself a few times).
In answer to the original post: It’s not too unusual to see the Axis equalizing the income by round 2-3, however, it’s often for a fleeting moment because the Allies can recapture Africa and may start to make gains in Europe. Sometimes you can make a second income surge in round 5 or so, due to Japan hitting 50+ income while Germany holds the line at 35ish (assuming KGF, of course).
One thing that’s important to keep in mind is that comparing the incomes at any one point in time isn’t the best way to assess the economic balance, because any territories that are getting constantly traded will only be counted for whoever owns them at the moment. (So if you compare after your team’s turn, things will look better than they are, and if you compare after an opponent’s turn they’ll look worse.) A more accurate index is to compare the total amount of money collected on each side over the last 5 turns. That may sound tedious to add up, but since people generally don’t save too much, you can get a good estimate by comparing the cash on hand (unless there are a lot of SBR’s going on).
