Yeha, the idiot AI early on decided to surface them right next to my fleet of battleships.
That weren't all of his subs but still...bad move.
He had one silo within radar range up North near Cairo which my bombers easily dispatched of before he could launch any missiles. I had destroyed most of his bombers beforehand (and the subs were gone too like I said) so when his attack came it was 'just' 5 silos firing with a few bombers. A swift counterattack with bombers and subs plus a short salvo from my silos wiped out all his silos while their guard was down.
He focused on my radars and silos and got a few radars and hit two of my silos, but that was all the damage he did.
So, after that, it was just a full-blow massacre with tons of nukes I had left...I even wiped out almost all of his infrastructure on top of killing over 90% of his population.
'twas quite glorious, if I may say so myself.
Oh and most of his fleet was annihilated early on as well...I waited for them near the coast with a huge fleet and air assistance from airports in Spain.
Anyway...only the AI could be this stupid. But still.
I agree that Europe is easy to play, but in a game with more than 4 people it's probably a bitch: you're an easy accessible target for pretty much everyone on the map, especially Russia and Africa. In a one on one game it's great though.
I like playing Russia too...if you ignore a minor city or two towards the East you can pretty much defend it like you could defend Europe...it's not as centralized and its vastness allows for various tactical manoeuvres. The only drawback is that their fleet has to start back North.
The America's and Asia are really hard to defend, but are a bit 'out of the way' and have either great starting positions for their fleet (America's) or a good position (Asia).