Economic Victory is a standard rule. I have never encountered anyone who tried to disqualify it. If they did I would refuse to play the Axis! I have been playing Axis and Allies for more than fifteen years, including tournaments at conventions and the only time I've seen the Axis ever capture two Allied capitals was when the Allies made a stupid mistake. Against a competent Allied player EV is the only way the Axis can win. The Allies have more production than the Axis so if you require the Axis to capture two capitals all the Allies need to do is stack infantry in their capitals and build up forces until they can overwhelm the Axis by sheer force of numbers. Even Russia can go 100% defensive and make Moscow impenetrable if they don't have to worry about how many points the Axis rack up. The Con of the North tournament rules acknowledge that EV is the way the Axis will win so the bidding is to reduce the total needed for EV rather than bidding units. In these tournament the bids typically are to give the Axis EV at 78-80 IPC, sometimes as low as 75 IPC, and even with these bids and other rules to give the Axis help the Axis have only been winning less than 15% of the tournament games.

Excluding North America, UK, and Moscow there is only a total of 96 IPC's on the board! Assuming the Axis doesn't sack a capital, it must hold almost 90% of all available IPC's, and give EACH ally a chance to bring their production level below 84.

This is the entire point of EV, it makes it possible for the Axis to win the game without ever taking a single Allied capital. And as someone else pointed out already, if the Japanese do a big land grab to bring the Axis total over 84 it will only be the USA that will have any chance to reduce the total below 84 before the game is declared over.

The most common and understandable resentment from other players is that they feel as Allies they have/had a fair/good chance to still win the game, and then lost because of EV (almost in all cases is the Allied player caught off-guard when defeated by EV conditions --- most of the time the Allied player is ready to give up anyway, but I refer to the exceptions)

An alert Allied player should always be aware of how close the Axis are to their EV. How would it be any different if they were caught off guard and lost one of their capitals? The Allies *always* have a good chance to still win the game. The game is slanted in the Allied favor. Again I say if the Axis could not win by EV I would *NEVER* play the Axis!

EV is a standard rule, not an option so I can see no reason why it should not be used in every single game. However, that does not lead to the conclusion that it is a balanced game. Even with EV the Allies have many advantages so it is still very difficult for the Axis to win against a good Allied player (or players) and I do support giving the Axis some type of added advantages.