I don’t see why some people keep complaining about Japan attacking Russia.
Because its impossible. Its so impossible, its like making a rule that every Italian unit gets an automatic hit in combat.
Japan could never in any universe get farther into Russia than about 500 miles, but the game in like 85% of the time requires Japanese tanks and pieces to horde Moscow for the axis to win.
The question becomes why does the game support such a ridiculous set of ideas that require this to win? So for us the game actually forces players into a crazy set of objectives, so while you complain that the game should allow an anything goes format what you don’t see is that its modeling an exactly closed pattern of play that by the design forcing players to unite and coordinate perfectly the movements that lead to the same ridiculous procession.
The design should make each nation get its own national victory conditions, so for example the Japanese player can win by not even attacking Russia and Japan can just concentrate on its own program of conquest and the axis don’t need to cooperate. This means that Japan can still attack Russia, but it wont win victory, but of course it can help Germany out.
IN the allies corner the Soviets should have their own VC and the UK USA player competes with the Soviets to win by getting to Berlin first ( for example).
Its too simplistic to just make everybody coordinate for victory, adding an element that your playing for your nation to win individually is greater. The axis never really worked together they were only linked by the fact that they fought the same enemies, but at the same time they had totally different reasons for entering the war. Nothing was coordinated. The western allies coordinated, while the Soviets had completely different reasons to fight the war and wanted to export Communism. UK wanted to limit the Soviets and USA played peacemaker to preserve the status quo.
None of this is found in the VC for any AA game, so people complain that these games are always the same old “Japanese tanks rolling against Moscow” thing.