The no IPC scenario should not be combined with free for all (rather, I haven’t tried it yet). What happened was Japan beat China with only a few ground units left, and the allied and Japanese fleets annihilated each other. The US was able to land in China though and worked with the Soviets to retake most of northeastern China by the end of the game. On the Eastern Front Germany and Italy waited for the Soviets to exhaust themselves. It was tough going at first but once the Soviets were broken they had almost nothing left to give.
Overall in this game whoever has the last unit wins, ground units were crucial and any mistake or bad luck is heavily decisive.
