Must be a different version than what I played.
Mine there was a bunch of little plastic men, tank, plane and ship counters that you put on top of red or white poker chips if you had a lot.
Any game that went beyond an hour to an hour and a half was because one side or the other was playing timid, building nothing but infantry and never attacking.
Nothing complex about the production system, except the annoying fact that the US player could only "liberate" all that darn "British" Africa area instead of use it for their own production.
And BTW allmetal, they released a version of Axis and Allies on CD rom a few years ago!
