Played 2 games against myself recently for playtesting purposes.
Game 1 was an allied win. Russia backpedaled to moscow and created a superstack, but inched it forward into Bryansk which almost forced germany to attack it, but that whittled down the german offensive and they had to backpedal.
The Western allies played a bitter alliance game and weren’t very cooperative. The UK built an IC in egypt and went into europe via greece, while the americans had a huge transport fleet that shuttled units to southern france. Early in the game the UK factory had 20 damage on it, so this route came about as an alternative.
Also 5 US subs in the italian home waters reduced them to 0 ipcs regularly.
The pacific was a tug of war with Japan constantly being driven backwards, but eventually Soviet and British forces linked up in the balkans, and the US force in france liberated paris. Germany was forced to capitulate. And japan was faced with a US fleet poised to clear SZ 6
Game 2 was an axis win. The japanese opted to take Hawaii on their first turn, and the US retaliated by clearing the pacific.
Instead of the huge fleets of the previous game, small fleets bounced all around the pacific, eventually the US and ANZAC took too many of the DEI for Japan to hold the bonus so Japan retaliated by attacking Russia. This tied up the train of units destined for moscow, and hence germany took it on the 8th turn and dropped 20 infantry in Germany and West germany.
Though the US holds Southern France, Normandy, and Holland/Belgium, with the USSR out of the way, there is no hope in liberating paris and holding it (as the US loses control of production centers there)
Though japan was beginning to be eroded away at, they held their own long enough, and stabbed the USSR in the back at just the right time.
In both of these games, Rome never fell. Each time the allies get into position to take it, the axis has just enough to make the attack infeasible.
In the first game this didn’t matter, because Italy was collecting 0, but in the 2nd game they were still getting positive numbers.