by FinalAttack
Lots of good suggestions here. Hopefully you haven't misinterpreted any rules. That would be a likely answer. So I'd get a second player to read through the rules and check anything you might have missed.We lost our first January because of cards, but we also saw we were not going to make it so we did recon on our N.America. So thats 4 less cards we needed. Doing stuff to set yourself up for the next round really helps.
To win when you first start you need about 3 x 5 = 15 cards. There are city cards 36 in the deck. So if you've gone through the full deck you should be at least close to your objective unless you are spending cards to move around too much.
Also using your turns efficiently and trading may help a lot.
Also are you upgrading at the end? There are some amazing player upgrades to help boost your ability to complete the objective.