Hopefully the placing of Moscow firmly in Europe will offset the Moscow magnet, simply because Germany will now be so much closer to that city than Japan, not true of the old maps with the Soviet capital somewhere in the Ural mountains.
If this is so, can Germany afford to sit and wait for Japan to arrive east of Moscow before attacking the place?
It should be uneconomical for Japan to devote so much energy to eating up central Asia.
There should, however, be a Soviet factory in the Urals (or at least the option to move one there) so that
1. USSR can fight on with a reasonable factory (3-4 IPC) if Moscow falls,
2. Japan has a reasonably attainable and valuable target if it decides to attack Russia.
I fully appreciate the need for the game to potentially diverge from a historical play out; my concern is that an optimum strategy for the Axis similar to that so familiar from previous versions will mean that the historical game NEVER happens, and the Pacific continues to be ignored.