I played out an interesting game a few days ago where I got to be the USA, and, going into the game I had a strategy to try and attack the strict neutrals. Here was my initial reasoning to try it:
Playing as the USA you’re really forced to try and make the most of your available moves. You don’t enter the war until turn three, which means you can’t make your first combat move until turn four. By this time, Britain and/or Russia will be in big trouble. The yanks face a rather serious problem though: everywhere you want to be is two moves away. This forces you into a situation where you will be stretched out and slow, as it takes two turns for your transports to land somewhere, then two turns back. So how can we get avoid this problem? Looking at the map, it appears Spain is the answer.
Essentially, by turn four you can have:
1 Carrier
1 Destroyer
1 Fighter
1 Strategic Bomber
8 Transports
8 Infantry
6 Artillery
1 Mech
1 Tank
Available to move and land in Gibraltar. Sea Zone 91 is rather safe, it’s hard for Germany to hit this with planes, so they would need to use boats. Depending what they have you may be able to get away with just the Carrier Destroyer and Fighter, especially as Italy can’t hit you if you own Gibraltar, and Britain may have boats in this zone as well; otherwise you may need a more defensive fleet (still much less than if you went near Norway tho)
On turn 4 you have 65 IPCs to spend due to entering the war, which will allow you to purchase another 4 transports, 8 infantry and 1 tactical bomber.
On turn 5 you can now invade Spain with a huge force, and likely have remaining for defense:
14-16 Infantry
6 Artillery
1 Mech
1 Tank
On turn 6 you’re now ready to invade Southern France (taking away objectives from Italy and Germany) and Normandy, and seriously relieving pressure on Russia. And having moved your transports back on Turn 5, you could have built 16 more infantry to move over to Spain as well. Germany will cringe.
What do you give up by attacking the strict neutrals? Turkey (2 ipc + 8 inf), Sweden (3 ipc + 6 inf), Saudi Arabia (2 ipc + 4 inf) and Switzerland (2 inf). So a total of 5 IPC + 20 Inf if they take everything, though really only the Turkey troops pose a real problem, the rest are too far removed to really become useful that late in the game.
What do you gain by attacking the strict neutrals? If Britain knows you plan to do this, they can take their initial starting troops and transport in Canada to South America turn one, pick up the free 3 Infantry there and wait for your assault on Spain. When you do they can then mop up the rest of the South American neutrals for +8 IPC. Britain also has two neutrals in Africa it can easily mop up for another +2 IPC. As the yanks, you can easily claim Spain and Portugal for +3 IPC.
So the allies gain +13 IPC each turn and a great position for the yanks to continue dropping huge forces in Spain every turn, in exchange for 5 IPCs for the axis and some infantry.
Thoughts?
I originally posted this to my blog here - http://www.nazgum.com/blog/2010/09/unstoppable-yanks-neutral-massacre-strategy.html - which has a lot more detail and some pics - but I love these forums so wanted to post this here too and see what others thought =)