@CPT-Flint At a high level, to go for a quick kill with Japan you’d actually want to try setting up for a J3 India takedown to force a win via the in-game victory conditions. To do this you’d want to:
J1: Buy enough transports to carry the units from Japan + the Philippines. Move-wise you want to clear out China + kill any fleet in-range EXCEPT PEARL HARBOR. Do not attack there as you need to keep your pieces in-range to fight in India by J3.
J2: Buy all Bombers. India is exactly 5 moves away from Japan on this map, so as long as you hold Burma you’ll be able to land. Load up every unit you possibly can into transports and move them to SZ36 (near Indochina) and unload in Burma. You should be able to take it. NCM all available air, Battleship(s), and Cruiser(s) into range as well.
J3: With your units from Burma (load some back onto transports to take advantage of bombardments) + the air units you brought in during J2 + the bombers you bought on J2, you should be able to bust India unless your opponent played very well. Depending on what the US Player was doing, build either all DDs or all land units to defend Japan.
With India down, Axis should be able to win fairly quickly if Germany performed well.
Just as a warning, following this Germany guide + my suggestions here will only get you so far. Once you hit Gold League and beyond you’ll need to learn conventional long-term strategies to get wins as the Axis consistently. For that, the game plan is radically different:
You do still want to focus on transports in the beginning, but mostly just enough to consistently move 8 land units at a time (probably INF) from Japan -> Yunnan every turn. Yunnan is the best location to ferry troops to because they can either go Yunnan -> Burma -> India OR Yunnan -> Sinkiang -> Kazakh -> Caucasus/Moscow depending on the overall game situation.
Beyond that basic point, what you do with Japan is largely dependent on whether the Allies are trying to Kill Germany First (KGF) or Kill Japan First (KJF).
In the former case, you want to either take India (to start pumping out 3 land units per turn from its factory) or build a factory in Manchuria (or FIC) and start pumping out 3 land units per turn there. ONLY DO THIS ONCE JAPAN HAS THE SPARE INCOME TO AFFORD IT, ALWAYS PRIORITIZE GETTING YOUR 8 LAND UNITS ONTO TRANSPORTS. You’ll also want to try snagging the VC at Hawaii if you have the spare resources and USA evacuated the Pacific completely.
In the latter case, your builds are going to vary greatly depending on the Allied fleet composition and overall strategy. Some KJFs involve USA trying to 1v1 Japan. Others involve UK + USA both pumping all of their income into the Pacific. I haven’t touched AAO in years so I don’t know what the current metagame is, unfortunately. I do know, however, that if UK starts spending money in India the best way to stop them is to build a Baltic Fleet with Germany (usually accomplished buy building a Carrier or two to land Fighters on, then transports behind it) and threaten Sealion. This will force UK to start building in London again, meaning Japan can potentially take India regardless of what UK’s attempt at applying pressure.
Hopefully this is at least somewhat helpful. I am very rusty at 42SE so I don’t think this advice will get you much further than Silver League. Hopefully as you start to ramp up your game count as each faction, you can pay attention to what your opponents are doing and learn from them. In my opinion it’s best to get good as both the Axis and the Allies to get a more complete understanding of the game.
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