Stuyvesant: Mostly protecting Suez. Africa has the misfortune of being a sort of strategic bottomless pit with a heart of darkness. Not the best place to try to wage a war.
Khanwulf: Nah, I said nothing here that was overly interesting.
reis91: I didn't say much on grand strategy either.
Enewald: It was fun!
Jemisi: Nahhh.
reis91: Maybe so, maybe so.
loki100: I agree that definitions of strategy tend to be on the rationalist side of things, thus downplaying the other two sides of the trinity that Clausewitz posited: irrationality, and nonrationality. Concerning your latter Clausewitzian point, it may have possibly been a bit harsh. But I believe I allow for the opportunity to conceptualize operations as engagements later. I know others have worked to try to fit operations into the Clausewitizian mould, and some accuse Clausewitz of having conceived of the operational level of war! The latter particularly is bizarre.
WhisperingDeath: Most of the people I referred to were actual practitioners of strategy, with hands-on experience. Jomini and Clausewitz of course were highly experienced by the Napoleonic Wars. Beaufre retired as a French General with experience in WW2, Indochina and Algeria. Wylie retired as a rear admiral, having had experience in the Pacific during WW2 and having been posted to all sorts of other naval tasks. Gray worked for the Reagan administration in arms control and matters of nuclear strategy, in a position that required senate confirmation. So their words carry a good amount of weight.
It'd actually be interesting to try to figure out where this strange idea that strategy has to be a great design first originated. I'd bet it's from some discipline which isn't particularly related to strategic studies but bastardized some of its concepts, like economics. I had the misfortune of reading a book on economic strategy once, mostly 'cause it seemed interesting at the time. It had the most rationalist definition of strategy I had ever seen, quite along the lines of the one you provide, of strategy being an overall plan etc. But that good had exactly one good idea, and the rest of it was mumbo jumbo and had some of the sloppiest thinking I've ever seen. Anyway, the point is that a plan does not a strategy make, nor does strategy require an explicit plan. Strategy serves policy. Policy does tend to have some sort of overarching vision. What was mine? To make Italy great, lead it into a position from which it could dominate Europe (and possibly the world). In this vein, should I conquer Switzerland? What about Greece or Turkey? In the end, I conquered the latter two but not the former. But really, those were just details. Minor details. Important details when it comes to the conduct of operations mind you, but still minor.
So strategy is not merely a plan, nor is a mere plan anything related to strategy. One of the common threads in virtually all strategic works and even within definitions of strategy is the ends/means dichotomy. You have a certain set of ends, of objectives, you want to achieve, and you have another set of means you can try to achieve them with. You have to match means to ends, and ends to means--no fighting to achieve ends beyond your means and all that. You thus may have set ends and set means, but the way is largely unknown. After all, the enemy is also intelligent and is also using strategy and is actively trying to thwart you and advance himself. Thus you cannot really define the way you apply means to ends with any great precision, although doing so is a favorite activity of peacetime militaries. The purpose of exercises that develop the ways of waging war are less for the plans, but more to develop strategic sense and insight. What sort of actions might bring the greatest strategic effect? If thwarted this way or that way, how might one adapt to continue achieving the desired strategic effect? Etc. Of the definitions I provided, Wylie's is in fact the closest to your conception of strategy, but he too would agree that a plan is not enough to be called a strategy. His exact words were "[a] plan of action designed in order to achieve some end; a purpose together with a system of measures for its accomplishment." The means-ends relationship is more important to strategy than plans. Virtually no definition of strategy ignores the means-ends relationship, while many ignore the plans aspect. It's just that plans are good tools to help illuminate the means-ways-ends trichotomy.
Tribal: Don't watch too hard, it'll be a little while yet. The new patch will apparently be released in the new year, and I would no doubt wait on that.
womble: Indeed, the insertion of another enemy did upset my ideas of who my main enemy would be to a significant extent. Well, strategy has to adapt.
Baltasar: Yeah the CAGs sat idle to a lage extent. This is primarily because using air units is a goddamn pain in the ass.
As for secondary theaters, I stripped them as much as I could. I left only enough formations in Spain to hold the ports, and enough divisions in Africa to deter the Belgians, British and South Africans from advancing. A total of ten or so divisions, the other 70-80 being in the East. And I think the shortcomings of the German AI were a central theme of the latter half of the AAR.