At game start, release Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Marianas as puppets. Disband down to 20 divisions and convert them all to the national guard template. Put all your free factories on infantry guns. Station all 20 divisions in the Philippines, ready to invade Japan. Also base your entire navy and air force in the Philippines, and take care of your usual game start fleet management to set up patrols, escorts, submarines, and one big deathstack strike force. Then do the following things.
1) Don't take a focus at game start, wait until you have 25PP to take the decision to core Alaska.
2) Take New Deal. Next PP goes to leaving the naval treaties. Take WPA when New Deal finishes, buying the silent workhorse, then the research slot right under WPA, then don't take any more focuses until the war with Japan is in progress and don't spent any Political Power. Save up as much as possible, you'll be needing it all later.
3) When Britain threatens you, choose the option to promise to disarm your navy.
4) Don't actually disarm your navy.
4b) This is where the things you did at the beginning come in. If you don't disarm your navy before the mission ticks down, every other nation in the Naval Treaties gets a war goal on you. Nations will typically only declare war if they border you or have a high enough force ratio compared to you. You released Puerto Rico because it creates a border with France. Releasing it means France will not declare on you. You disbanded down to 20 divisions, so Japan thinks it's strong enough to defeat you and will declare war. Japan and France are the only nations in the treaty that have a high enough division count at game start to think they can beat you, since the UK does not consider its puppets. France (and UK) is a democracy and won't declare unless they border you, but Japan is a warmongering Fascist country with aggressive AI.
5) Japan should declare war on you right before Alaska finishes becoming a core state, some time in early September 1936. Because you released Hawaii and the Marianas (and you did not call any puppets into the war), the first place Japan will naval invade will be Attu Island, which is now a core state of the USA thanks to the first decision you took.
6) When the USA is at war and the enemy is occupying core US territory, the new decision appears, the Homeland Defense Emergency Act, for 50 PP. This decision completely removes the Great Depression, sets your base war support to 90%, and changes you instantly to War Economy as well as Extensive Conscription.
6b) Make sure not to do any focus that reduces the great depression, because HDEA only removes Great Depression, not Slow Recovery or Slow Economic Growth.
7) In order to take Total Mobilization, you have to be at war with a country that has at least 50% of your total factories. But, you say, "the USA has over 160 factories and japan only has about 60!" Well, what you do next is trade away as many of your Civilian Factories as you can for resources, to lower your factory count until it is below twice Japan's number of factories. Then take total mobilization and cancel the trades. Once you've taken Total Mobilization, you can start taking focuses again, since the main reason for saving up PP early has been completed.
Congratulations, you are now the USA on Total Mobilization with 10% consumer goods in ~September 1936!
7b) After step 6, the USA can start gaining political power while doing focuses, so you can start doing focuses now and still have enough political power for what you're planning to do later. Don't start a focus until after Total Mobilization has been taken though, you want it as soon as possible.
7c) For the rest of the steps in this little guide, you'll be simultaneously managing a war with Japan until its conclusion. I trust that the people reading this will know how to prosecute a war themselves, so I won't tell you what to do here since things may go differently for you, but I will say what I did. What I did was get naval superiority all around Japan with my whole fleet(subs raiding, death stack on strike force, 60 destroyers in groups of 10 escorting), set my naval bombers up over the East China Sea, and invade with my first 10 divisions onto Kyushu from the northernmost port in the Philippines, landing on every tile with 10 separate invasions of 1 division each. Japan pushed me back with its larger numbers of divisions, and I was holding the strait on the northwest of the island that connects Kyushu to Honshu, the two tiles south and east of it, and Nagasaki. Japan piled up many divisions on eastern Kyushu. I had been recruiting new divisions as much as I could, and when 5 new divisions arrived to Kyushu, I had them naval invade every tile on Shikoku, and held out on the three straits connecting Shikoku to Honshu and Kyushu while the many Japanese divisions in Eastern Kyushu ran out of supplies and were destroyed. After over half of the Japanese army was wiped out in this encirclement, conquering the rest of Japan was easy. Patton got Trickster and over 90% of Urban Assault Specialist and Hill Fighter just defending my beachhead on Western Kyushu, so I took a little bit of time to grind him up to 100% in those two traits to unlock Adaptable before ending the war, annexing Japan and creating supervised states in Manchukuo and Mengkukuo, giving Manchukuo Japan's Chinese states and liberating Korea. I ended the war in mid 1937. Democracies can use the "Local Autonomy" occupation policy which boosts compliance quickly, so use that and Japan should have close to 100% compliance by around 1940.
8) Take the focus "Suspend the Persecution." About this time this focus completes, it should be November 1936, and you will get the election event. Switch to Alf Landon for the free huge political power, you need all the PP that you can get.
8b) If you've been building congressional support, the house and senate will both flip if you select Landon and you'll be heavily behind in both if you invested into increasing support. Once President Landon is safely in office, spam as many decisions as you can to gain congressional support as fast as possible (medium lobbying, special measures, do any "invest in X" missions that have popped up).
9) Take the focus "Reach out to the Ware Group" while you build up congressional support. Hire Harry White (Financial Expert) and Whittaker Chambers(Editor). They both cost 0 PP to hire. You now have -5% consumer goods and +5% PP gain and stability. Don't take any more focuses after this, just keep banking more Political Power. When you have support of 58 senators and 261 Representatives, move on to step 10.
10) Fire your Editor (he's free anyway). Hire Earl Browder the Communist Revolutionary, and take the focus "Union Representation Act" the instant you get enough congressional support to meet the requirement. Fire Browder immediately after taking the focus and get back the Editor, you don't actually want to increase your communism. When the focus completes, pick the option that doesn't lead you closer to civil war.
11) Pay another 150 PP and hire Browder for the second time. Select the focus "Accumulated Wealth Tax Act," and fire Browder again, you still don't want to increase communism. You now have a permanent -5% to consumer goods. Counting the -5% from Harry White, and the base 10% from Total Mobilization, you are now at 0% consumer goods required as the USA, in roughly February-April1937. Congratulations! This will have the negative side effect of increasing communism by 5%, but we'll deal with this later.
12) Do the focuses "Old Age Pension Act" as soon as you have enough congressional support (49 and 218) followed by "Guarantee the American Dream."
13) When you have enough support (58 and 261), spend 150 PP to hire Earl Browder for the last time and take the focus "Worker Management Act". This will give you a permanent +5% to factory output. Immediately fire Browder (for the last time this time) since we don't want to increase our Communism support.
14) Spend 100 PP to select the decision "Ban Communism." This will put you back up to 100% Democracy support, erasing the 5% we gained from the Accumulated Wealth Tax Act.
15) Take the focus "Neutrality Act." Now you have all the benefits of the communist tree while staying Democratic and leaving the whole Democratic branch of the focus tree available.
16) Arsenal of Democracy down through Wartime Economy and all the other fantastic industrial focuses are the main priorities now. After this, you can pretty much do whatever focus you want in any order for the rest of the game. The world is your oyster. Join the Allies and fight the Axis or fight Russia using Manchuria as a base of operations, you can pretty much do whatever you want. You have absolutely insane industry and can build an army to dwarf the rest of the world.
Some things to remember at this stage:
You'll have so many factories that your resource needs will skyrocket, mostly Aluminum since you will likely have 150+ factories on planes. Make sure to keep up your industrial and excavation techs, you'll fill up your build slots quickly and your factories will sit there doing nothing. Eventually you will have to go down to Limited Exports and spam Aluminum Extraction decisions to keep up with your production requirements.
Picking up the focus "Wartime Industry" and the Armaments Organizer minister along with Total Mobilization will make converting Civilian to Military factories literally instant. Do this when you run out of building slots and your industry tech is maxed out, even on Limited Exports you'll be receiving so many CIC from trade that you don't really need to keep many of your own, only what you need for importing resources. Factories from trade will fill all your construction needs once your build slots are maxed.
You annexed Japan early, unless you plan to fight the UK at some point, there is no need to build any dockyards or research any naval technology for the entire game. With the USA's six research slots this means you can go massively ahead of time in industry, tanks, and air even on technology you don't have bonuses for in your tree.
If you become the Allied Spymaster in 1939/40 you will be able to use all their spies for blueprint stealing to get 300% bonuses and ahead of time reductions for any one tech tree about twice a year(civilian infiltration followed by steal industrial blueprints is best). Make sure you have two spies with the Safe Cracker trait (reroll if necessary) and the agency upgrades for the blueprint stealing missions to have 100% chance of the bonus outcome.
