Typing from my phone since the internet is down at my spot for some reason.
Historically the flow of aid works better with some nations than others depending on the tineline. The US and Britain both sent aid to Russia. The US, Britain and Russia all sent aid to China. For the various factions that make up the British Empire here the situation can probably be whatever we want, since the divisions are sort of artificial and don't really graft onto any historical political/economic reality of the time. Thematically I think of it like the dissolution British Empire, where those factions vaguely correspond to what the Empire devolved into following the war, but even that is kind of a stretch. The aid situation for a place like Australia could reasonably flow to/from the US as much as Britain I'd think. France and Brazil likewise seem like we could probably do whatever feels good for the gameplay.
The issue right now that I see is that the flow is too one directional, basically from the US/Britain to everywhere else for PUs/Oil, and then the reverse situation for steel. That's all on the Allied side though. The Axis weren't really integrated economically in anything like the same way that the Allies were. So sending aid from Germany/Japan elsewhere is more of a game thing in my view, to make that team play in a somewhat comparable way.
Part of me thinks a simpler approach might be to detach the Aid money from the regular economy and have it be like a once per round decision for each team.
So for example, instead of the USA sending its own regular cash to one of the other nations, maybe its just a prompt at the end of the round for entire side like... "Allies have 55 PUs, 22 fuel, 33 steel in aid, shall they send to Britain or Russia?" maybe the following round the choice is between China or Australia, later on it might be between France or British Colonies, whathaveyou. Basically a larger amount of money/resources, but where you have to make an either/or selection about where it goes. Then you could just have like a historical blurb accompanying the prompt that provides some kind of rationale for what is happening that round...
Like on the Allied side in 1941, maybe its "Flying Tigers" aid to China vs "Free French" aid to France. On the Axis side in 1941 it might be aid to Near East (Golden Square coup, pro-Axis government installed in Iraq) vs aid to Balkans (Yugoslavia dissolved, pro-Axis governments installed in Croatia). Or whatever makes sense thematically for that round, where the choice is kind of a toss up, between two similarly compelling options. What I mean also is that something like aid to Russia should be the sort of thing that maybe only happens like once every 3 or 4 rounds, with another good choice always set against it so the decision is trickier, like having to choose between aid to Russia or aid to India in the same round (when both are likely under pressure). That sort of thing.
In gameplay terms that would make the whole aid thing rather less tedius, but still provide some dynamism where the team can choose a different focus in each game depending on what kind of overall strategy they have in mind.
Basically instead of a bunch of smaller hard choices between "should I keep the money/resources, or send along, maybe get taxed etc" it'd be a choice like "do we want a beefy Atlantic fleet for Britain, or a bunch of Russian tanks this game?" On the other side of the map maybe, "do we want to be all deep in China this time, or do a wily Australian bounce about?" hehe. You know something that is still a hard/consequential decision, with a bigger chunk of change involved, but where the choice is broken down on a round by round basis, instead of turn by turn, if that makes sense.
If you wanted an opt-in/out, you could do it where where every nation can chip in to the overall aid pot for their team in smaller increments as a way to push the remainders, but then have the potential aid recipients go on a rotation (based on whatever round it is.) So maybe in the early rounds it makes sense to have certain pairings of aid nations come up, whereas in the endgame other pairings make more sense. Or you do it in blocks, where 3 nations are up for aid in a given round, but you can only choose 1 to actually receive it.
Maybe you could have additional players called
Axis Aid and Allied Aid, whose purpose is just to bank. So each nation could send aid to their teams aid bank at the end of their turn (similar to the way it works now), and then at the end of the round those Aid players allocate the total aid received in a specialized phase with the either/choices for that specific year.
