Italians have no factories?

Unless I’m totally blind, or got a faulty map out of the box, Italy has no Industrial Complex in 1941?  :?

I just find that odd as can be… Italy has had an IC from Classic all the way through Global SE… I just don’t see why they don’t have one… and since default rules say you can’t even buy a new IC, that means Germany can’t even build a fleet in the Med.  I mean heck, the UK starts with three IC’s in England, India and even Australia, but Germany only gets Germany, and no Italy?

I know this is a simple house rules fix with “ok, Italy starts with an IC” statement… but I’m wondering why this was omitted from the official version of 1941 in the first place?  Seems really odd to me and hard to justify when you give the UK a plant in Australia of all places.

Thoughts why Italy doesn’t have an IC (or did I get the only copy of the game without it printed on the map?).

Well Russia, the UK and US all have multiple ICs… so if they’re aiming for a “don’t want to overload the players with options” angle, they failed on 3 out of 5.

Personally, I’m just going to start tossing an IC in Italy for future 1941 games… I see no reason why there shouldn’t be one there… my point was that I found it odd it’s not there by default.  Larry should come here and explain himself!

@Private:

Hi Wolf. I would suggest that the axis have the advantage on this board w/out an Italian factory, so giving them one unbalances the game further. In particular the UK’s very limited build capacity in India & Australia makes fulfilling its global role very difficult, even without having to contest Africa and the Med.

Having given the UK almost a free ride in Africa, I think the game designers compensated by rendering its ipc value as almost zilch.

So if house ruling an Italian factory in then house rule in some compensating allied advantage - for example a 2 ipc value/capacity in India.

Alright… let me think this one through…

By your own admission… the UK gets a free ride in a worthless Africa…

The only perceived “advantage” to the Germans getting an IC in Italy would be to build/up the Italian fleet and/or invade the acknowledged worthless Africa.

As a previous response in this thread hinted, maybe the lack of an IC in Italy is to prevent a new German player from wasting resources building a fleet in the med instead of pushing into Russia.

So… the “advantage” to the Germans of having an IC in Italy would be to spend what limited resources Germany has in 1941 to build/up the Italian fleet, build extra units for the transports of this fleet, and invade and overwhelm a known worthless Africa (all the while ignoring spending against Russia).

In my opinion, the Jedi are evil… oh wait, wrong context… what I mean to say is, in my opinion, building an IC in Italy probably does nerf Germany and buff the Allies if it’s going to cause the German player to divert from Russia to spend all his money building a fleet to take a worthless Africa. I’m not seeing how this would be a bad thing to game balance?

(I’m beginning to see a pattern here… Private Panic, a known Englishman, is always seeking an angle to give a buff to the UK player…  :-D )