Game thinking is no longer conventional, people forget that. They focus on taking territory by territory thinking it’s helping them economically, when really, they just need to focus on objective and economic based territories that ACTUALLY matter.
Japan’s outright strategic objectives for winning should be
1) Hong Kong - Easiest
2) Phillipines - Easy
3) India - Difficult (But not if your plan properlly)
4) Hawaii - easy to extremely difficult. - The reason Hawaii is last, is because it can be reached from your Capital Zone - so your Entire income can focus on it.
It all comes down to What happens early in China and India. Most people just buff themselves Right into China Right away - I think this is bad, the new theory should be all about Neutralization.
Stack up in Kwangsi. You can get like 14 ground units there. take the odd territory here and there from china, but don’t expose yourself to counter attack. The game is not won by beating china, it’s won by getting your men out of china and into the fight for india.
J2, you can hit Yunnan with everysingle plane you have, and a FAT stack of ground units. Chances are, the Chinese won’t stack here, but they could - hope that they do. Regardless, they have almost no counter to take yunnan back on China 2, it will be a slaughter. So you have a stack in Yunnan .
Yunnan IS the burma road, without this territory you cut China’s income roughly in HALF. by taking 1 Territory! Forget about China for the rest of the game.
J3 you attack south to fight the british, right along the Burma road, China won’t have a chance to take it back - Ever. By this time you can have built a naval base in Hainan and an airstip in Kwangsi, all fairly standard japanese buys. You can then also make any ships or transports available - ready in this region as well.
Now a few things can change here depending on what the british have done with their navy. But there is a trick to this- Most mess it all up here because they hit the money islands instantly - instead of a direct focus on India. I think this is BAD FORM.
Ignore the money islands- sure you might lose 16 IPC’s of income, oh well, you’ll get India. Use your airfoce to take out ANYTHING that is blocking the path from Hainan to Burma. Then, NCM your entire navy and full transports from Kwangsi/Hainan to burma, and unload the ground units INTO burma. Now what’s india going to do?
Not soon after this it is easy to nuetralize ANZAC from the game. IF at some point you take the Soloman islands, or a likewise territory - you can eliminate ALL ANZAC No’s. That said Mayla takes out half their NO’s aswell. Make sure you deprive them of these objevtives, and make a point of killing there navy once or at the same time you do. They’ll be out of the game for the rest of it.
It all comes down to Hawaii after that, and at the same time peeling units from India into those Money islands. Now you are on Economic Par, China has done nothing. Anzac is neutralized, and all you ahve to do is put everything you have into Hawaii.
OR, you send everything you have onto the Europe board to make all the difference in Russia. Ouch. an Anti Russian campaign is part of my strategy too. But I’ll put this all together in an article someday to make it easy.
If you don’t do something like this, then you better be sending everything you have against America, to try and draw their units out of Europe.