I’m saying its more valuable to take the European Neutrals (Yugo, Greece, Bulgaria) in the first two turns for Italy because you don’t expose your Trn to the UK navy. Especially if I2 you are placing an AC in SZ97 and landing 2 Ftrs on it.
I3 is kind of a slack turn for Italy as you are buying Trn to move the remaining units from the Neutral crush into Egypt.
You may be facing a situation where you have no units in N.Africa at that point due to no reinforcements and the UK playing aggressively there. If you engaged in a staring contest, all the better. You can still take take Tunisia if you want, Algeria at most. I wouldn’t suggest Morocco because you would have to divert too many units to defending it from a US landing and potential US Naval Base.
Basically you aren’t even considering N.Africa until at the earliest I5/I6 because Egypt is your goal and not the NO for controlling N.Africa. You’ll get a NO by taking Egypt anyways (due to S.France and Greece under Axis Control). Really, you just waste resources and fall into a trap if you try to take N.Africa as it spreads you too thin because you can’t advance and defend your flank without giving up control of Yugo and Greece.
Let the UK take your sole territory worth any IPC in Libya. You’re more than making up for it with other territories that are harder for the UK to reclaim. You get the added bonus of not having to take and defend Morocco if you decide to disable the Naval Base in Gibraltar which will be Public Enemy #1 for the US if you disabled Gibraltar.
In a nutshell, you don’t even worry about N.Africa because once Egypt falls, you have Iraq to take which is a NO for the Axis, and you have the remainder of Africa to race across with IPC producing territories that are much easier to defend and take than wasting the resources taking and holding until much later in the game. Besides, with Egypt in Italy’s hands, you enable Germany to ignore Moscow’s 10 billion infantry chipped up and just push right after Leningrad and Stalingrad for the VC win before the US really threatens much more than London.