Most Star Alliance airlines have zone-based redemption rates rather than purely distance based ones right? For example, using MileagePlus miles to book an itinerary out of a minor airport (let's say CMH), connecting through a hub airport (let's say ORD) and then flying to an airport in another zone (NRT) and then continuing on to another airport in the same zone (NGO) would cost the same amount of miles as flying solely between two hubs (ORD-NRT) because the first two airports (CMH,ORD) and the latter two (NRT,NGO) are within the same zones as each other. Correct?

Now, most people will tell you that the best way to book a multi-segment award ticket would be to search space on every leg individually using either ANA, Air Canada, or United's website; and then calling your mileage program's reservations center and feeding all the individual segments to the representative. Using United's website to look for CMH-ORD-NRT-NGO at the same time tells me there is no saver award space available for that route but searching CMH-ORD, ORD-NRT, and NRT-NGO separately reveals that there is indeed space on all segments.

If United had shown me available space for my original, complete itinerary; I could have ticketed it for 65,000 miles (one way, in business class). If I search for all the segments individually and booked them separately through the website, I would be charged for all the segments individually. 25,000 miles for CMH-ORD, 65,000 miles for ORD-NRT, and 12,000 miles for NRT-NGO (all in J) which would give me a total of 102,000 miles. Considerably more than the original.

Which leads me to my question; if I were to call MileagePlus's reservations center and tell them, "Please book me on UA**** from CMH to ORD,
UA/NH**** from ORD-NRT, and NH**** from NRT-NGO"; which amount would I be charged?