Yeah I wasn’t angry, but I wanted to stress that beginning with tanks is a pretty major game-changer.
The argument that “UK could buy them” doesn’t really work, because if Germany is doing their job and putting pressure on the UK, most of the UK’s money is going toward boats, helping France, helping Russia, or a combination of all three. A UK2 all-naval buy is very common. I prefer 2 BB and then 2 Inf for India but a lot of people do 2BB/1SS or 2BB/1TT.
For rounds 1-4, the UK needs to attain stability; they cannot focus on offense in the middle east. They have to secure sea dominance and gobble up African IPCs. At most you might see 2 or 3 units being put in India for defense unless the Ottomans ramp up the offensive. Since the UK will most likely only be defending Mesopotamia and holding the line around Trans-Jordan, tanks would be a very poor buy given their defense value.
The turning point of the game is around rounds 5-6 when France is successfully holding the line against Germany due to massive IPC gains elsewhere and Russia has already fallen. The UK will have likely eliminated the Germans from Africa and is now up to 33-40 IPC/turn depending on how UK/France split up Africa. They are then free to start up the Indian war machine.
If I could buy tanks as the Ottomans from turn 1 I would let the Turks take Bulgaria (of course!) and Romania/Serbia and just hit India hard. As Germany I would do Russia as normal and try to stalemate France while building up enough navy that the UK couldn’t possibly split their 30 IPCs between both parts of the world that early in the game. It would be too early for the US to really do anything to help and you could even send any excess Austrians down from Russia to help out.