Hi Rocoteh!
I’m glad to see that you are still here and still active in making WW2-global even better. I’ve been without computer for two months (I had a faulty hard drive, and had to replace it
). But before that happened I have tried to play both as France and as the Soviet Union, and I thought I should share some of my observations with you before the next version comes out.
France
France was very hard to play. I don’t know why I picked France. Probably because I didn’t have the time to play Germany again, and also because there was a lot of players testing France earlier this year, so I may have been a bit inspired to give it a try. And in hindsight, I really wish I hadn’t. I got beaten up so badly by the Germans that it was humiliating.
I thought it would be a great idea to immediately invade Spain to keep my back free when the Germans attacked. Taking Spain was easy, but apart from Madrid I had very little use of the cities I took. It just took too long to build new units, and before I could send them to the front the Germans had already invaded, and started to wear down my defenses. I just didn’t have the quality nor the quantity needed to match the Germans. Perhaps I played too defensively, I was kinda hoping I would wear them out, but it was the other way around.
We clashed in Belgium. I took Namur from the Germans, then they took it back the next turn, then I took it back, and then the Germans took it back, and so on.
I lost 30 infantry divisions in Namur, and all my tanks. Not even a British landing in Belgium could improve my situation. I realised that I could never win against the Germans so I gave up, turned to static defense and watched the Germans take Paris. I don’t remember which week it was, but it was before the end of 1939, and then I quit the game.
Maybe I should have played more aggressively, and invaded Germany, but I doubt that would have changed anything. It was just so damn hopeless, so I had to give up. And I guess my feelings reflect reality quite well. The Germans had a superior army.
I should point out that I played on Sid-level (as usual), and that I neither used draft nor mobilisation, but I don’t think that would have changed the outcome. I could have prolonged the war, but for what purpose? To wait for the Soviets to come and save my butt? That would have been a long wait. My conclusion is that the only way of winning as the French is to hope for an early German-Russian war. Otherwise you don’t have a chance.
The Soviet Union
After my defeat as France I tried the Russian side, and it was a huge difference. The Russians had more of everything. Sure, their units are much crappier than the French, but they make up for it in numbers. Best of all was that I didn’t get involved in any wars (until much later in the game). So I spent the first two years building workers and improving cities. At the end of the game I had 450 workers, plus at least 50 captured workers. I feared an early invasion by either the Japanese or the Germans, so I tied almost all my troops near Germany and Manchuria, but it turned out to be a mistake, since they proved to be non-hostile towards me. Instead I got problems with an endlessly aggressive British AI.
I think Britain declared war on me at least three times. The first time came as a surprise. I had to move all my forces to Persia, and the war was going poorly, so I settled for northern Persia before I made peace with the Allies. The second time I was better prepared, even if I lost hundreds of infantry divisions (I refuse to build the crappy tanks the Soviets start with). I took the rest of Persia before I made peace. And the third time I had finally started to manufacture the T-28, and that really changed the situation dramatically. I pushed all the way through the Middle-east, and well into Libya/Egypt/Sudan before I ran out of steam.
After that I had also started wars with Norway/Sweden/Denmark and Turkey (simultaneously). And that’s when I started to have computer problems and was forced to abandon the game.
The greatest thing about Russia is that you don’t start in any alliance, so I had plenty of time to build improvements. The disadvantage is the crappy units you start with. They are only good as cannon-fodder.
There was quite a lot of city-razing in my game. A city in western China was razed, as well as Hiroshima. And in Europe the Germans razed Bordeaux, Toulouse, Gibraltar, Lissabon and Belfast. I also noticed that one of the minefields outside Hamburg was gone, so I assume the British destroyed it. Overall, the Axis performed very poorly, especially the Japanese. They never managed to take Hong Kong, instead they were being pushed back by the British, who swarmed all over China with hundreds of units, even after I cut off their connection to Africa by taking Persia and the Middle-east. This made me think. It is possible that the Japanese just had some bad luck, they usually perform better when I play as Germany, but still, they had great difficulties with the British, especially when they started to mass-produce Matildas. In my game the Japanese were pushed back all the way to Bejing, this was in week 15 1942, if the game had continued I’m certain the British would have conquered Manchuria before the end of the year. It’s very similar to the situation I had as France against Germany, the Japanese had to deal with an enemy superior both in numbers and in quality. So here’s an idea: why not build a line of Chinese garrison troops, like you have done for the Soviet Union, in southern China to prevent the British from attacking the Japanese too early in the game?
And speaking of which, I noticed that the Soviet line of troops is not complete. In Karelia the Finns could get into my territory, so I had to send troops to block them. And the Persians were even worse, they constantly violated my territory. I got really tired of asking them to leave, and once war had started with the Allies I made sure the Persians wouldn’t cross my borders again. It’s not very realistic that the Allies and the Finns can do this, so I would suggest you extend the lines in Karelia, and also build a line close to the Soviet border in Central Asia, and link it with a line of Chinese troops, to keep the Allies out. Another suggestion to prevent too much fighting in western China (Persians, British, Japanese, Chinese and even some French troops were there) is to remove the roads in that area. It might help. The Japanese are still not moving towards Indo-China as they should, they go after the Chinese Communists first, and they always reach Central Asia that way. A line of Chinese troops might reduce the likeliness of both Japanese and British border violations in the Kashmir/Tibet region.
Another thing I noticed is how difficult it is to research new techs quickly. I think that the science rate should be reduced just a little bit. As it was now, I couldn’t build T-28s until the latter half of 1941, and that’s way too late. Even at 100% science rate I was still researching 1941 techs well into 1942. So there’s no wonder the Soviet AI never had T-28s when I had all the early wars with them as Germany. The first tech in the tech tree always takes 40 weeks (no less) to research for the Soviets, even if their science rate is 100%.
You only need a victory point under control of that civ. If no "city" of that civ exists in the target region, may be invisible cities could be a great help.
On the other side, if scepsis would always be best element in the world, we wouldn´t have any railroads till now on the globe. 
). when i say a devil of a time i mean that, for example, the Lowlands civ and GB were originally alligned in the alpha/beta stages of AoI v3.0. now, the LL TRs would continually drop off her flag units right outside of London and not Amsterdam. this occurred across the board (ie w/ france, the US, etc etc). so this is the dilemma i reckon...at least for me it was.
