@Anonymous:
don’t even buy the game, it’s a cheapo piece of crap. It arbitrairly shuts off, magically deletes units, and on top of that, and even on the hardest AI setting you may be better off playing a sped
This is true for the regular version “Axis and Allies”…it goes for about 10-12 bucks at amazon. The original release was indeed bugged severely.
What you want to get, is the “Axis and Allies: Iron Blitz” version. It runs like butter, looks great, and allows you to customize the map/units, as well as giving you many scenarios. They range from starting in 1939, to one of the Allied powers powers being neutral (US or Russia), to Russia and occupied Germany as Axis and Japan as Allied…great stuff.
While the AI is not brilliant, it does move sensibly and makes few strategic blunders. Besides, if it is too easy, you give them more units to start. All-in-all, a great game.
The price reflects this. It auctions at Ebay for anywhere from 40 to an insane 160 bucks.