Has there ever been a thought to put more starting troops on Hawaii? Even Neutral_Allies ones? I’ve played a couple of games against an aggressive Nikola1975 recently and wasn’t able to defend both Sydney and Hawaii in the early rounds. If the J1 buy is 3 transports+extra then I think the Anzac fighters are needed to hold Hawaii, which makes Sydney able to be taken.
In a game years ago against regularkid, I was never able to retake Hawaii after it had fallen in spite of 100% Pacific buys. Perhaps I am too afraid of a repeat of this? That was an earlier version of PtV so maybe the 3 plane limit to carrier scramble hadn’t been implemented than? Unsure what the problem was to be honest but it proved way way more difficult than I would have expected.