You can’t plan to beef the Middle East and buy a full turn of UK stuff for the Middle East, turn after turn,
without really knowing what Germany is doing.
Germany only needs 2 transports and 10 planes to threaten a viable invasion of London. They can build this at any time and raise the invasion risk.
UK pieces that cover the sea on carriers cannot help stop the land invasion
UK planes that leave cannot help stop the land invasion
UK planes that die cannot help stop the land invasion
UK starts with virtually nothing on London in both G40, G42
Germany? Starts with tons of stuff, buys tons more.
Germany can pick up 2-3 rounds of troops without $$. UK has to build every one. Germany can invade Scotland, Nemestia and then use the transports the next round to attack the same targets again, with a second group of transports.
These dynamics mean that UK Atl. has to react to Germany, each and every turn. Even if German odds are 50/50, losing London is devastating, so you have to constructively and conservatively protect it. I don’t think that there is ANY viable argument for saying “well, just let em take London and we’ll fix that later”. You have to stop it before it happens, by deterring it. You have to make Germany think every turn that an attack on London will cost it its airforce, since you cant really destroy their sea threat before Round 6 or so.
This is why we keep saying that Allies Strategy is reactive. Any Allied strategy that looks beyond turn 2 has to take in effect the dynamic and changing focus of the Axis to be judged as good or bad.
Committing to buy bases, high value units, and spend very little to protect or bolster UK home is a recipe for disaster because you’ll start your plan with SA buys and factory buys, the axis will see this, and should correspondingly ramp the Sea Lion threat.