I don’t like the Tirpitz setup as much as the one immediately before Tirpitz. I tried one full round on your latest setup, and maybe I just played poorly as the Axis, but I think the Allies simply start with too many boats on the map for a balanced 1941 setup. In the south Pacific, British have 35% chance to win with 1 CA vs. 2 DD, 2 transport in Caroline Islands – this is very swingy if the British win, because in addition to killing 2 transports, it prevents the Japanese from deploying the 4 infantry from the Carolines to Borneo, East Indies, or ANZAC. Even if British lose that battle, they can put the Australian DD in New Guinea, the Indian BB in Singapore, and the Indian DD in Philippines. No matter how well Japan does in combat, this means they cannot capture Borneo or East Indies on J1, plus India is quite safe. Even the Philippines are not easy to take vs. 4 Allied infantry and 3 Allied boats.
Japan needs to build boats (or maybe planes) to deal with all of the Allies ships in the Pacific, but with only 15 IPCs at start, this does not leave enough income for purchasing reinforcements. It is too easy/risky for Japan to stall out in the land war in Asia simply by running out of infantry and income. The M3 transport bringing troops from Jordan and India to Thailand on UK1 together with the “blockade line” of British ships in Singapore / Philippines / New Guinea is very powerful and can shut down the Japanese economy before it gets started. Africa can be safely abandoned to Germany because UK is guaranteed to collect Indonesian income three times: at start, at end of UK1, and again at end of UK2. By the time Britain starts to run low on income, Japan will be crippled and USA will be closing in for the kill on Tokyo.
Meanwhile, the Russian ships in the Baltic Sea mean that Germany can not make any combat move with amphibious troops, so the infantry in Norway and Finland wind up just sitting around doing nothing on G1. With Gibraltar blocking the exit to the Western Med, Germany cannot afford to attack all of the British boats, so the Canadian navy lives, so Germany really wants to garrison both France (for IPCs) and NW Europe (b/c of the starting factory). This is very expensive in terms of Germany’s starting units, and so Germany cannot reliably take and hold even 2 out of 3 of the Eastern Front territories (Belorussia, Baltic States, Ukraine) even by committing the entire tank corps. This means that the Russian counter-attack will often pump Russia back up to 30 IPCs at end of R1, which is too high for the Germans to make any progress.
If instead Germany abandons France or NW Europe in order to stack troops further east, much of the G1 build and some of the air force will have to be sent west on G2 to deal with the Allied attacks on France or NW Europe, which gives Russia a chance to stabilize. Germany is only slightly better off on the eastern front, and the Western Allies get extra cash from trading German territories. Because Germany is trading at least one Atlantic Wall territory, Germany cannot land fighters to protect that territory, and Allies can continue to re-invade into that gap throughout the game.
There are still some fun decisions to make, and I like the way the Pearl Harbor battles played out (I split forces between Hawaii & San Francisco; America was able to sink the main Japanese battle fleet, but only by diverting so many aircraft that the Operation Torch attack failed.) Gibraltar is interesting as a fortified canal, and it does tend to discourage an ahistorical 1941 Sea Lion, because you need at least one transport to take Gibraltar, but any transports you leave in the Western Med on G1 can be trapped in the med by an American destroyer on US1 so that they can’t participate in a G2 Sea Lion.
In addition to favoring the Allies in this version, I think maybe you have started to err in the direction of too many changes and too many starting units. I’d encourage you to dial things back a little bit, aim for something a bit simpler. You’ve got some good ideas in here; keep working on it! :-)
1941REDESIGNRussia2 Argo test G2.tsvg