@newpaintbrush:
Picture the board in your mind for a moment. Basically, you have Japan’s starting 30 IPC, plus USSR’s 24 IPC. The Allies will have UK’s 30, US’s 42, and Germany’s 40. That’s 54 vs 112.
Short version: All IMHO: The Allies can’t be beat down quickly. They have shorter supply chains. They can sit back and get more IPCs than the Axis. The key IPC-producing Allied territories are not easily vulnerable to attack. On the other hand, the Axis have no key territories that they can attack, they have very long supply chains, and they cannot outproduce the Allies on the European front without blowing a big fat wad on industrial complexes.
The assumption was that Moscow was taken with a relatively large stack of armor, while Berlin was only taken lightly. Allow for some variances here, but naturally if Japan takes with 4 arm and Berlin is taken with 20 arm we’re looking at an entirely different situation.
Japan is at 81 the way I see it, pacific islands, eastern coast of africa and trading karelia/belo/ukraine. The allies are at 92 trading the same 3 territories. That’s a conservative measure. Most likely Japan will be able to stack either karelia or ukraine, trading norway and possibly e.eur or balkans as well. I disagree with you with regards to the battle for Africa, as a minimum Japan will hold s.afr, kenya, iea, egypt. They’re directly adjacent to the strategically important sz34.
To repeat what I said about logistics: the axis have much easier access to africa, sure the allies can ship lots of units to africa where Japan in response takes more land in europe. At any point that stack of arm can turn around through caucasus and push into africa. Now, are the allies going to ship even more units? If they don’t start shipping preemptively they will fall behind in the arms race and the units there will be stuck and cornered. If they ship en masse they are still stuck in africa and the Jap tanks can turn around and gain more ground in europe. 2 rounds is all you need to shift 80 armor from ukraine to egypt. The allies will need a pretty hefty fleet to match that.
I also disprove of the allies controlling the med, any fleet there is doing no good. They are better off shipping units from uk/e.us to algeria than shipping from s.eur/w.eur to libya. Japan can sit tight in sz16 and get their support shots at balkans, adding subs/bbs as necessary. The allies are forced to stack w.eur and s.eur to deter landings. Many places to defend, few to attack.