My goal was to take and fortify the Med, fortify West Europe, and try to keep Russia at bay with my mobility. Of course first to go was France and Denmark and the WA navy in the Med. I built a couple more paratroopers in Italy and took Gibraltar, Malta, and Egypt. I put a couple infantry, arty, AA, and a fighter on Gibraltar. As for the Middle East I went ahead and marched through Iraq.
I believe I attacked Russia in Fall 1942 so I definitely waited long enough. I also wanted to fight Russia without taking the Balkans. So I ignored Yugo and Greece and lost those allies. However, because I had only two territories bordering Russia and did not have to garrison the Balkans it did not seem to be too much of a disadvantage. Russia went through Persia but I took that back and actually took the Caucasus without much trouble. That was about as far as I could stretch it down there but it tied up Russian forces. Supply would, I’m sure, be much more difficult in this area if I had to manage it myself. One infantry was able to hop around the Sahara and take all of Africa. Because I garrisoned S.Persia and Egypt the WA navy basically gave up. So I took my entire German navy around S.Africa and this is what kept the WA transports from reinforcing there. In the north I was able to take Sweden and Leningrad, bring on the Finns, and fend the Russians off for awhile. Because I left strong garrisons in the Middle East, Denmark, Gibraltar, and France, this is all I could do to Russia. Their numbers were growing quite large when the game ended.
The WA, as I have learned is standard, invaded Portugal and Morocco. I did damage to their transport fleets with the navy I brought around Africa, but was unable to dislodge them from Africa. Also, I managed to keep Spain with another strong garrison. It seems that those garrisons really intimidated the WA because after this they made no more invasion attempts, choosing instead to concentrate on the Pacific. I checked the forums, and thanks to that, I figured out that I needed transports linking all my Africa resources in order to collect on them. Once I did this I won a Decisive victory on my production points. I was surprised that this strategy, really quite conservative, was able to gain me such a victory. I suppose I did have the production in Rumania if not the troops. But it seemed as though ignoring the Balkans paid off this time.
