I totally missed the fact that you mentioned you played with NAs when posted the first couple of times. But it’s REALLY important. My bad.
If you are playing with national advantages, you are gonna get majorly hammered. Do you know how ridiculous those NAs are? And you are using MULTIPLE NAs?! I sure hope the Allies are limited to one random NA each. But even if they are -
Superfortresses: Game-breaking insane. America buys nothing but bombers and strat bombs Germany. Shuts Germany down completely, very quickly. After US builds five bombers (for a total of six bombers), it goes for tech dice Heavy Bombers for added impetus. Losing 12d6 (Average 42) IPCs per turn with Germany is a REAL PAIN IN THE ASS, and Germany can do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to stop it. And it happens by the fourth turn (first turn US builds two bombers and flies one to UK, second turn US builds three bombers and flies the first two to UK, third turn, US flies three bombers to UK and rolls all tech dice, fourth turn, Germany is totally shut down. Oh yeah, and the US bombers also go around and pulverize the Japanese navy. 15 IPC for two fours? Man.
Lend-Lease: Also game-breaking insane, you get ridiculous fighters from UK, and carry out insanely powerful hit and run attacks on BOTH Japanese and German fronts. Even if the Allies don’t have superfortresses, all the Allies have to do is a typical KGF. You have infantry and tanks coming in from UK by the fourth turn, and Russia’s IPC production easily jumps to 45+. I mean, how ridiculous can you get?
UK gets Joint Strike, Colonial Garrison, and Radar - all very nice.
In general, it’s hard for the Allies to get a sucky NA. Salvage isn’t all that hot. Mideast Oil isn’t all that useful in most games. But all the rest of the Allied advantages will give you something nice.
Some Axis NAs are nice. Panzerblitz lets you hit and run against USSR, so you can commit your fighters to Western Europe. Luftwaffe Dive-Bombers isn’t great, you generally don’t want to risk your fighters for half-assed bombing runs (the NA CAN be used, but it is risky as h***). Rest TOTALLY suck, you are not going to build lots of artillery, and subs are useless against the major problem of having to take Russia down. But it’s not like Germany has an insanely game-breaking NA like Lend-Lease or Superfortresses. If the Allies get EITHER one of those, they should kick the c*** out of the Axis.
Japan - you don’t want to build new destroyers because they’re simply inefficient, and the one you start with will probably die by the end of round one. Kamikaze and Kaiten are super expensive to use. Dug-in-defenders is useless, if your infantry is defending on islands (i.e. US overpowered the Jap fleet in the Pacific), you’re dead anyways, and dug-in-defenders just slows the US kick in the face a little. Lightning Assaults and Banzai are the only useful Jap NAs; you use lightning assault against the top two USSR territories and against multiple territories in Africa. Banzai lets you build mass infantry and transports in Japan, switch to second IC quickly.
