Does anyone have any photos comparing the different versions ….....

@vonlettowvorbeck1915 A couple of Chinese territories in the original version have dual Japanese and Chinese markers printed on them too.

In China that CHANGED the map by adding a Chinese control symbol on a Japanese controlled area, to indicate that its Chinese influence

@toblerone77 A bit late to the party here but anyway…!
The sculpts are made in a lighter plastic than later versions and the Japanese infantry sculpts, for example, really show this. Lots of them have half their helmets missing and their rifle stocks are too thin and are thus often bowed or malformed. Another example is Italian tanks which have smaller and far inferior sculpts to the europe 1940 version.
This is my favourite Axis and Allies version regardless and I have swapped out all the pieces with better sculpts from other version. Its probably cost me a fortune in potential re sales but I don’t care.

i made 2 mods for TripleA’s aa50,

China takes their turn with Russia (plus a number of other balancing changes and some units moved around)

UK starts with a factory as a bid, meaning they place a factory somewhere on the board before the game begins (plus a number of other other balancing changes, and some units moved around)

both games have tech activation happen at the END of a turn, not right after you roll.  so for example, if i rolled for tech and got heavy bombers, then i would not get it right away, but instead would get it during the place-units phase at the end of the turn.

both games also have the options to use LHTR heavy bombers (roll 2 dice, pick best, if sbr add 1), and to turn tech off completely
and to use LOW LUCK dice, yay

Well, you guys might be missing something here.  You do not need to agree that the game is imbalanced, or have a consensus on what bid is necessary to balance it, to have a consensus on what I am talking about.
Example: Person A may think the game is already balanced and that a bid is not necessary, Person B thinks an Allied bid of 6 ipcs is needed when you play with NOs, and Person C is nutty and thinks that 21 ipcs are needed for the allies with NOs.  But all of these three people may in fact agree that a bid of 2 infantry in europe would be equivalent to a bid of 2 naval warships off the coast of america.
Agreeing on what to do to balance the game is not a pre-requisite to agreeing on certain bids types being equivalent.

Or, to think about it in a different way, lets think of this as a Ratio.
I’m just going to throw this out there, but lets say you have a Bid of X.
If you use it on the “front line” in either Europe or Africa/MiddleEast, then all you get is X.
If you use it not on the front line in Europe/Africa/MiddleEast, or you use it on the front line in China, then you get X1.5
If you use it not on the front line in China, or you use it in the Atlantic on Navy, UK main island Air/Land, then you get X2
If you use it on Pacific navy, or American Continent Land/Air, then you get X*2.5.

Now, as you can see, if you think X should be zero, then they all end up as zero.  If you think X should be 6, then you could either get 2 europe/egypt inf, or 3 chinese inf, or a cruiser in the atlantic, or a DD + a sub in the pacific.  If you think X should be 10, etc, etc.

3 hours for a game of Axis and Allies?  lol

Expect at least 4-5 hours, plus setup time.  Some of the variants are only about 3 hours or less, though.

@captainjack:

Could you take a picture of the IPC’s - I’ve heard they look cool.

I’ve uploaded one to BoardGameGeek.

That looks pretty sweet!