This is what I have been doing with some success. As Japan I am trying to capture as many territories I can that I don’t need to defend. Candidates usually are Australia, NZ, Hawaii, Wake and possibly Madacascar/ south africa.
I am considering going after Brazil however this is a lot of effort for an easy eviction by the USA. Any opinions?
Turn 1 excluding mainland actions which are slightly hampered by the lack of the 2 men not coming across from the philipines.
What I usually do is kill the hawaiian fleet via bomber battleship and sub. Hits are taken in the following manner sub, battleship and then bomber. If I have killed the sub and the aircraft carrier I will leave the plane as I don’t want to get hit by his 4 defense and sacrifice my bomber for the plane. This basically depends on how the roll of the dice went.
At the same time I take the other battleship, aircraft carrier with one plane and transport from phillapenes and hit australia. I am not sure of the odds but I take this without much difficulty.
Turn 2 excluding mainland
Transport remaining men from australia to new zealand. If you don’t have enough men you can grab one from the solomones and still hit nz in the same turn. (Essentially your aircraft carrier and battleship and idle this turn unless the british made a mistake with the transport placement from India. In a noncombat move fly one plane to Japan so it can reach hawaii next turn.
Turn 3
Take ac, battleship, 2 men from new zealand, one plane from Japan and hit hawaii. This should be cake walk. At this point it is likely that the american has moved remaining sea units through panama sea zone to go after germany. Now they have a problem. Japan can hit any territory on western seaboard from Alaska to panama. I usually take 2 transports and hit Alaska with my other battleship to compound this problem for the US. My whole plan is to get some resources from America to fight Japan. At the end of turn 3 Japan has 4 men in Alaska with a battleship, 2 men likely in Hawaii with Battleship and aircraft carrier with 2 planes. The US player will have to buy some units to counter this in Western America. This is not good enough however, you need to get them to deploy them against Alaska and other spots. We must make America defend America or the game is over before it starts. This should buy Germany time. On this turn
Turn 4 buy IC in india. You should have around 40 units coming in per turn now. Russia should be consolidating around moscow. You need to push the russians back but not to overextend yourself.