House rules to balance Axis and Allies?

The balance of the game is actually set like that intentionally as far as I've been able to tell. Germany is intentionally at a disadvantage to force Japan to focus on the mainland. I've won dozens of games as the axis simply by making sure Japan advances on Russia's back door, with the lost IPCs for all of the allies as Japan takes over asia the game will balance out nicely by the 4th or fifth turn. Until then Germany is supposed to get hammered to prevent it from becoming a powerhouse too early. With so many high IPC plots surrounding it, Germany can become very powerful very fast if it takes out even one country on it's own.