Italy strategy

INTRO

Well as we all know, games can be won or lost in africa. Such has been the case for this unassuming continent for every edition printed in which (generally speaking) successful axis players have taken at some point, be it with japan, germany, or italy.

I JUST PAY THE COST OF DOING BUSINESS

on your first round in global, you may feel bummed out your battleship got sunk and 2 transports were lost and it may seem odd to get only 10 ipc, and it may seem tempting to buy a fighter (after all fighters cost 10), don’t do it. Buy a destroyer ONLY if you have to protect a transport  (or if your bship wasn’t sunk) or nothing at all.

clear the naval out of the water if you can, depending on what is left, if you can’t do it all, don’t gamble for it, kill what you can with 2 rolls for every 1, let the germans take care of the rest.

You may leave southern france alone if you prefer a german fleet rather an italian fleet. Greece is also up to you as well, in any case do not lose the two tanks you start with, they need to assist the germans in killing any blocker units (or making the russians block with 3-4 infantry rather than just 1, which is just as good as germany blitzing anyway).
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Round 2. things are looking up, you have at the worst 20 ipc to spend on naval. Sounds like a carrier buy to me! a destroyer if you made a NO or got southern france and greece or a transport if a carrier handles the possible threats to sinking you.

now sometimes people send the india air to syria round 1 and join it with egypt… now this can be a pesky problem… you just do another carrier buy and get the germans on it and delay a round (those india fighters are highly needed in pacific, count on the japanese to have success sooner than later in his campaign, which is punishment enough for allies pestering your plans).

you may also notice at times, 3 mech or 3 inf a turn in union of africa being placed by UK… (having 2-3 transports shipping men should solve the problem.

work hard for africa while you can, but do recognize when the americans have become a formidable threat to europe. If your income is good take over defending europe for the germans so he can expend more resources on taking russia.

IF usa steps in, your naval can simply cross the canal and stay hidden from disaster, possibly go to the pacific and haunt the anzac. Good times late game.

You can get egypt and transjordan and push persia/iraq.

If italy is not a threat to egypt or africa. USA just ends up supplying UK with naval so he can get transports/drops going sooner.

The cost of atlantic goes down for USA (no reason to get more than 4 transports for the atlantic in the case of USA).

That’s a ton of pacific. Race Japan containment and germany taking russia. After that UK pac and UK takes over guarding egypt.

Sometimes that can mean 33 UK inf from uk pac (that makes 20-30) and UK makes 30+ it converges on egypt. USA fills in the gap.

Convoy disruptions can screw japan so hard if he doesn’t stop pop n roll. Generally speaking I like to get calcutta with Japan, because then when germany gets russia… egypt is no problem.

There is a trade off to everything. Japan cannot keep up with USA / ANZAC income. Because of multiplayer games where the usual is italy giving up on africa, I am pretty much forced to get calcutta or get that income low and keep it low for as long as possible.

the mech inf that backpedals into russia, can keep russia going for awhile. especially if Russia has iraq/persia for income.

plus uk dropping 10 guys a round can get pretty annoying pretty fast, with mech infantry from south africa rolling up every round.

it is a choo choo train.

Then there is the issue of a norway/novgorod choo choo train. especially if italy is standstill in central europe. choo choo train norway or novgorod. It works

I mean if all you had to do was push germany mech up to russia to win, no problem every game… then there would be no reason to play this game at all… we’d just call it germany wins, while japan stays pretty, and the allies look dumb… instead of axis and allies.

Then again many players are playing with bids, especially for low luck games. you have to account for allies bids and where they could go.

Low luck I think needs a bid BIG TIME. Played 5 games and axis just crushed it each time.

did allies get a bid in these games? I am trying to find the magic number for allies to get. AA50 is 13 bid if you play 1 per terr, no bomber. so far been doing 6 allies.

It is just like Revised and 1942. Russia always dies, but the key is to play correctly and take Germany on the same round or round after russia falls.

Well, in revised and 1942, everyone and their mom gets their africa on… unless you are stacking up for caucasus.