@LMD:
One follow-up question, however, is how in the world the UK maintains 32 IPCs? By the time the UK is able to trade EE/WEU territories, it has already lost India, Persia and French Madagascar (-5 IPCs), and usually also New Zealand, Trans-Jordan and other territories in Africa (-2+ IPCs), and has only gained Norway (+3 IPCs). So, even with EE, UK might get up to 28-29 IPCs, but never gets close to 32 IPCs. Of course, WHEN Japan takes the Africa in the later rounds, UK’s income is often in the low 20s. We’ve never been able to take WEU and hold it without substantial losses, so those 6 IPCs never get factored in. So, it seems like 32 IPCs for UK is unattainable in the mid to later rounds when UK needs them to send units to Europe. Also, G frequently strat bombs the UK, depleting much needed IPCs. As a result, I really never have enough to fully utilize UK’s 4 transports.
Well, you usually dont lose india for good till R3 most of the games, the same holds for AE, but then you already land on Africa to compensate. Most of the times I try for New Guinea R1, which gives me 1 more IPC if succesful. And then you have Norway. So you really should have no problem be above 30 R1-4 if not for the rotten dice. You build AC, 2dds R1, 3 trns and some land units R2, You might consider buying actually one more trn R3, because, you can threaten to hit WEU, Germany, EE with 10 units which will make it more difficult for gerrys to hold.
You can also overbuild the inf here so that you will need to buy less on the later rounds when the UK income will start to drop. If you have 6 starting land units with the 2 in Canada, you have build 3 more trns on UK2, you can build trn and 7 inf UK3 which would give you 2 tnk, 2 art, 13inf plus 5 trn at the end of R3 with some ipcs remaining. The combined fleet consists of bb, 2 ACs, cru, 1-2 dds, 3-4 figs, so the gerry really cannot sink that.
YOu would most likely have some units on Nor already, but still you can use the cache of extra infs to go with the new build tanks. US cannot come earlier anyway, and the synchronicity of the 16 units a round drops is what really matters.
Once you hold kar with allies, UK can trade other European teritories and you should not have problems with the income anymore even if you still dont trade WEU.
And if you are really short of income, you can always adjust the buy. Lets say 4inf, 2art, 1tnk are for 25 and still give you reasonable punch.