I’m sure this has been discussed before, and possibly a way to beat it has even been found, but I’m new here and the search function doesn’t seem to be working right now.
Anyway, I was playing as Japan a while back and someone used this strategy on Germany and basically left me fighting the war alone. Anyway, I was able to take India, China, and Buryatia on J1 and by J3 I had taken Western US. Things were of course going pretty well for me. Unfortunately though the US player had some extremely lucky dice rolls early on and researched heavy bombers on US1 with only one die and long range aircraft on US2, again with only one die. So anyway, I was in the Western US by turn 3, thinking that the US, which of course had been going KGF which allowed me to take the Western US, wouldn’t be able to have it back. Well I forgot about their upgrades and by US5 they had it back. But even with the Western US back in American hands I began stepping up my invasion of Asia again. Unfortunately though the German player had made no advance into Russia and the US at this point had 5 heavy bombers. So basically Germany was reduced to an overwhelming income of 0 IPCs per turn and Russia was able to put full focus on me, and of course we lost.
So after seeing how easily heavy bombers could decimate the German economy, I decided to play as the allies and see if I could focus on heavy bombers only and win a game through decimating the German economy. What I did was every turn I built 2 bombers and use 10 IPCs to research heavy bombers. After I got heavy bombers (which I did on turn 1) I used the 10 leftover IPCs to build transports for the atlantic. By G5, Germany had only around 20 IPCs in the bank and by turn 6 they had nothing. Russia was then able to both push into Germany and take it over all while fighting off the Japanese from the East. It worked like magic.
For any of you still unconvinced, let me give you a quick rundown using extremely conservative estimates. Your starting bomber would begin bombing by US2, taking away 3-4 IPCs if you don’t have heavy bombers yet. Your next two bombers would begin bombing on US3, and by now you should have heavy bombers since you should have had six rolls at it by now, unless of course you are extremely unlucky, and you should take away about 21 IPCs from Germany. By turn 4 you should have 5 bombers, and assuming one is shot down, you should take away 28 IPCs from Germany. Next turn you should have 6 bombers, and again assuming one is shot down, you should take away 35 IPCs from Germany. And by turn 6, you should have 7 bombers, and if one is shot down, you should take away 42 IPCs and Germany should have a whole 0 IPCs in the bank and Russia on their doorstep from the last 3 turns of operating at half economy (which is also why I assumed that their economy hadn’t passed 40).
Also, I’m not too sure about this one, and I can’t find my rulebook, but is it that each bomber can only take away the equivalent of the territory value, (10 IPCs from Germany) or that overall a territory can’t lose more than its value to strategic bombing raids in one turn? If it is the first one, then scrap this whole plan, (although two heavy bombers attacking Germany and one attacking Southern Europe might work well) but the second one works in the online version so I would assume it’s right.