Personally I like to scramble pearl, you got 3 fodder in front and the extra 4 rolls usually hit… not often you get chances to take out air units potentially.
You want to merge at yunnan with china and uk pacific, even more so if he is doing pearl. should have less air units in range than normal.
You want uk atlantic to be hyper aggressive. sz 97 attack no exceptions.
What naval did G1 take out? Did you scramble anything?
If you can get away with 6 inf 1 fighter buy to defend with, do it, if you can get away with 1 dd rest inf buy do that instead. Before germany gets archangel you can force him to buy subs for sz 125.
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with uk pacific, since japan did not take borneo you can easily take java and sumatra, and bank on them for that round and the next (2 boats and he wants malaya, celebes, java, sumatra, and borneo… so you lose two and bank off the other 2 so your transport loss gets converted back into ipcs no matter what).
Land 3 fighters on java with anzac. That will buff up yunnan the next turn. That is going to be the spot you want to hold forever. If Japan attacks it, it will at least save you from losing India, plus China NO money is hard for Japan to deal with.
The only atlantic thing you need, is 2 sub, then 1 sub, then 1 sub. I generally get a destroyer or two round 1 if there are subs off of canada to hunt down. In which case I do that… that is it. that is all you need.
You should take brazil with usa unless uk had a transport survive. USA transport can swing over to the pacific or drop into north africa.
After the sea lion possibility passes over, drop that egypt minor, you can keep italy at italy and fly fighters toward russia.
don’t waste money on airbases unless it is at egypt to stop an italy drop or something. same thing with naval bases.
If sz 110 is still alive, you can shove that in the med or if you buy 1 dd, keep it in that spot where germany has to do 3 move from west germany to hit it. Then yes, you can force germany to buy subs to stop Russia NO, which is effectively 1 less armor hitting russia.
If you go shove it in the med… you will have the french fleet, the uk fleet in 97, and that fleet in the med by gibraltar… should kill germany air / prevent italy from buying naval for a bit / stop italy NO for a fair amount of time.
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If you do decide you want usa involvement in europe. The first round or two is your purchase window, set up a 1 way ticket to norway or italy attack. Even if he can sink that naval and the transports, as long as you can dump into norway and stop that NO, it is totally worth it.
I suggest reserving iraq, ethiopia, and somalia for Russia. tobruk and libya if possible as well. Come rounds 4-5 you want to fly air into Russia. The 3 java anzac fighters can go to yunnan and then toward russia after that if you need it to. uk air can go, uk pac air can go etc.
Persia is a judgement call, honestly. I like persia for russia, because then it makes things easy for russia to take iraq and then load up on boats and then get somalia and ethiopia. (another reason just shoving stuff in the med is strong, it allows you to move all survivors toward egypt area so you can guard a transport to load russians for ethiopia/somalia).
So yeah that is my two cent. If you attack ethiopia round 1, I suggest a retreat after two hits.
You are going to have to make some sacrifices here and there. The downside to a G1 DOW is usually, they don’t buy any naval, so you should be able to kill his 1 transport with russian sub or something. Also they tend not to attack sz 110.
So yeah, you invest early rather than late if you do europe play. Otherwise go with bare minimal. Get fighters to russia. Bank off the original europe pro axis and axis territories.
Since you at war on R1, you can already advance towards your goals.
