Italy a bad design

@SgtBlitz:

@eddiem4145:

I completely agree that the game is broken. After all, not making the game so Italy can have a 50/50 chance of taking all of africa and making it very likely the Germans have to do it and regulating Italy to a subserviant role is completely broken. What were they thinking. It is like they were making a WW2 scenario in 1940 or something.

Oh and add the game being broken because of France too. I mean, really. France has no chance against Germany. Who would want to play France.

Heh, that you, Ed?  We Axis players are just whining about the indefensibility of Italy.  Damn history, we want this game to give the Italians a fair shake!

We want Brits to get a fair shake, when their entire atlantic fleet can be killed G1, and even the Med fleet can be killed with German planes, remaining Italian navy.

@eddiem4145:

And unless there are players out there without a job who live in there parents basement and have a bunch of friends who are of the same status, no one could have played more than 1 or 2 games, so I just think the whole idea of the game being broken right now is just, silly.

You underestimate the dedication of hardcore gamers enjoying a final week before heading back to college.  I’m 5 games in having had the game since last Friday :)  This isn’t counting a couple test games against my room mate just playing Germany v Russia 1v1’s so I didn’t have to learn the dynamic on the fly mid-game.

I hear you loud and clear Sgt Blitz,

1 thing though. As much attention as a weak Italy has garnered, It amazes me that there hasn’t been 10 times more attention put on the fact that China is so weak. The fact is that Japan was incapable of beating China outside the coast lines without the resources of the East Indies and the surrounding islands. Then they had a chance. The US only put 10% of its resources to fighting Japan and they never got close to conquering China. Though with another tactic like playing more defensively in the pacific once the DEI and islands north of Australia were taken, could have perhaps brought victory in China then perhaps a chance to invade Russia, the fact is China being so weak is utterly ridiculous, much more than Italy being ridiculous.

To fix it, I have played around 10 games with China going first and getting to place 1 extra infantry per territory, and forcing the US navy except for its Aircraft carrier to base and stay in Hawaii until at war and Japan gets 1 double impusle attack that can only be used on the islands to simulate their suprise attacks. This really balanced everything, made it more realistic and put the whole pearl harbor thing into play.

The problem is not Italy. It’s the awfully bad setup of Pacific that has about 3 times the number of aircrafts that it should have. I doubt Larry will ever propose a brand new setup so it looks like it’s gonna be “don’t play global” or “do it yourself”. Personally, I prefer the second option by far…

@Blitz:

@calvinhobbesliker:

@SgtBlitz:

@eddiem4145:

I completely agree that the game is broken. After all, not making the game so Italy can have a 50/50 chance of taking all of africa and making it very likely the Germans have to do it and regulating Italy to a subserviant role is completely broken. What were they thinking. It is like they were making a WW2 scenario in 1940 or something.

Oh and add the game being broken because of France too. I mean, really. France has no chance against Germany. Who would want to play France.

Heh, that you, Ed?  We Axis players are just whining about the indefensibility of Italy.  Damn history, we want this game to give the Italians a fair shake!

We want Brits to get a fair shake, when their entire atlantic fleet can be killed G1, and even the Med fleet can be killed with German planes, remaining Italian navy.

That is a lie. Germany is in no position to kill Gibraltar fleet and planes are needed to either attack London fleets or help paris attack. There is no counter. Hence it is broken.

No, the Med fleet can be attacked on G2 with planes in West Germany even if it’s DD, CC, CV, ftr, tac in the Med. In the event that some ships survive, the Italians can mop them up with a DD, CC and 2 ftrs.

Where in the hell are Italy’s SUBS???  Italy had 116 subs in its Med fleet at the onset of war, and NONE are represented in this game.  Germany at its peak had about 250 submarines, of which 5 units are represented at game start surrounding Britain (which was highly unlikely for all of them to be concentrated so at this time in 1940)!

Give Italy 2 SUBS at game start to balance out the Taranto fleet; with these 2 extra soak hits perhaps the Brits would think again about a UK1 raid!

@SgtBlitz:

Where in the hell are Italy’s SUBS???  Italy had 116 subs in its Med fleet at the onset of war, and NONE are represented in this game.  Germany at its peak had about 250 submarines, of which 5 units are represented at game start surrounding Britain (which was highly unlikely for all of them to be concentrated so at this time in 1940)!

Give Italy 2 SUBS at game start to balance out the Taranto fleet; with these 2 extra soak hits perhaps the Brits would think again about a UK1 raid!

What about Britain’s mech? If Italy gets 2 subs, balance German subs to 3, which will also save some of the RN.

Please also look at the ahistorical problems of the allies: China too weak, UK gets entire fleet decimated and loses most of Africa, India falls easily, etc

@calvinhobbesliker:

@Blitz:

@calvinhobbesliker:

@SgtBlitz:

@eddiem4145:

I completely agree that the game is broken. After all, not making the game so Italy can have a 50/50 chance of taking all of africa and making it very likely the Germans have to do it and regulating Italy to a subserviant role is completely broken. What were they thinking. It is like they were making a WW2 scenario in 1940 or something.

Oh and add the game being broken because of France too. I mean, really. France has no chance against Germany. Who would want to play France.

Heh, that you, Ed?  We Axis players are just whining about the indefensibility of Italy.  Damn history, we want this game to give the Italians a fair shake!

We want Brits to get a fair shake, when their entire atlantic fleet can be killed G1, and even the Med fleet can be killed with German planes, remaining Italian navy.

That is a lie. Germany is in no position to kill Gibraltar fleet and planes are needed to either attack London fleets or help paris attack. There is no counter. Hence it is broken.

No, the Med fleet can be attacked on G2 with planes in West Germany even if it’s DD, CC, CV, ftr, tac in the Med. In the event that some ships survive, the Italians can mop them up with a DD, CC and 2 ftrs.

That will be one costly attack for Germany

@shohoku201:

@calvinhobbesliker:

@Blitz:

@calvinhobbesliker:

@SgtBlitz:

@eddiem4145:

I completely agree that the game is broken. After all, not making the game so Italy can have a 50/50 chance of taking all of africa and making it very likely the Germans have to do it and regulating Italy to a subserviant role is completely broken. What were they thinking. It is like they were making a WW2 scenario in 1940 or something.

Oh and add the game being broken because of France too. I mean, really. France has no chance against Germany. Who would want to play France.

Heh, that you, Ed?  We Axis players are just whining about the indefensibility of Italy.  Damn history, we want this game to give the Italians a fair shake!

We want Brits to get a fair shake, when their entire atlantic fleet can be killed G1, and even the Med fleet can be killed with German planes, remaining Italian navy.

That is a lie. Germany is in no position to kill Gibraltar fleet and planes are needed to either attack London fleets or help paris attack. There is no counter. Hence it is broken.

No, the Med fleet can be attacked on G2 with planes in West Germany even if it’s DD, CC, CV, ftr, tac in the Med. In the event that some ships survive, the Italians can mop them up with a DD, CC and 2 ftrs.

That will be one costly attack for Germany

Perhaps, but aa 60-70 ipc Germany can easily replace the planes, while a 29 ipc UK can’t replace that loaded carrier. This leaved Britian with the following on the Europe board: Cruiser off Brazil, Destroyer off South Africa, Trans off Egypt(if moved to a safe place), and DD/CC in Pacific.

@Blitz:

@calvinhobbesliker:

@Blitz:

@calvinhobbesliker:

@SgtBlitz:

@eddiem4145:

I completely agree that the game is broken. After all, not making the game so Italy can have a 50/50 chance of taking all of africa and making it very likely the Germans have to do it and regulating Italy to a subserviant role is completely broken. What were they thinking. It is like they were making a WW2 scenario in 1940 or something.

Oh and add the game being broken because of France too. I mean, really. France has no chance against Germany. Who would want to play France.

Heh, that you, Ed?  We Axis players are just whining about the indefensibility of Italy.  Damn history, we want this game to give the Italians a fair shake!

We want Brits to get a fair shake, when their entire atlantic fleet can be killed G1, and even the Med fleet can be killed with German planes, remaining Italian navy.

That is a lie. Germany is in no position to kill Gibraltar fleet and planes are needed to either attack London fleets or help paris attack. There is no counter. Hence it is broken.

No, the Med fleet can be attacked on G2 with planes in West Germany even if it’s DD, CC, CV, ftr, tac in the Med. In the event that some ships survive, the Italians can mop them up with a DD, CC and 2 ftrs.

That is extremely situational. The Italians rarely have any fleet left and proposing the Luftwaffe waste it’s few planes against the UK ships is just further advantaging the allies. As not only did their starting boats knock out Italy’s navy, but they also take some German planes with em along with any that died in the Atlantic. It is ridiculous anyway you try to justify it. And even after the Luftwaffe wipes it out, the Italians are supposed to rebuild a fleet making 10-12 a turn and take Africa? No way. Change is needed.

You’re worried about the Italians building a fleet? They can actually make almost ipcs: 10 original, 5 no warships in Med, 1 Bulgaria, 1 Tunisia, 1 Syria or Jordan, 1 Kenya makes 19. Northern Italy even connects to paris, so they can take France for 4 ipcs+19. They can also take Sudan if the Brits emptied it. Meanwhile, after Alexandria falls, Britain won’t get any NO and will be making 29 ipcs and will only have a DD  and CC in Europe. They have a worse rebuilding problem than Italy

Yes, but we’re also talking about whether the game is broken due to Italy’s weakness, and I’m countering that by saying the UK is also weak.

How is it too much? You can even build planes in West Germany on G1 to add to the 5-7 planes remaining. Very good odds for Germany. If Germany doesn’t get Paris, it’s income reduces by 6 and it doesn’t get 19 ipcs. So? According to you, Italy needs that money more. Germany will still be making 55-65(plus 5 for Scandinavia NO) ipcs, way more than Russia. Britain is about as strong as Italy at this point, and Japan is on par with America(Japan can easily get up to 78 ipcs, the US will be at 82).

Calvinhobbesliker,

1. You’re up on our Global game for Russia’s turn.  Quit spending all your time whining about the Royal Navy and get to that PBF game!  I’ll never get to mess around with the US’s 82 IPCs a turn at the rate its going!

2.  Yes, its ahistorical that the Germans are killing 90% of the RCN Round 1, but how else did you expect the game designers to balance the game with the UK???  Traditionally, the UK always took a pounding from German navy and air G1 in every single iteration of Axis and Allies.  But they still had a HUGE military advantage; just like the US, their main capital is not in range to be invaded and serves as an unstoppable base to send out units without reprisal.  The UK is realistically never under attack or threat of invasion (unless they’re really dumb with bad UK1 builds), and they get to raid the Germans at will, pretty much like every other A+A game out there, with an insane re-built navy stack, for 2/3s of the game.  Most AA50 games I played Germany usually had to abandon Russia due to UK raids into Poland or Leningrad from the Baltic, and I’d leave an inf stack in Germany just so the Brits couldn’t surprise-attack-end-the-game there.

Hell, the Denmark straits closed rule is the best thing I’ve seen in a long time towards balancing out UK’s insane naval advantage, especially for the Baltic (finally!).  It was incredibly ahistorical that the British could send its entire navy through the Straits of Denmark without worrying about mines or Luftwaffe strikes.

@SgtBlitz:

Calvinhobbesliker,

1. You’re up on our Global game for Russia’s turn.  Quit spending all your time whining about the Royal Navy and get to that PBF game!  I’ll never get to mess around with the US’s 82 IPCs a turn at the rate its going!

2.  Yes, its ahistorical that the Germans are killing 90% of the RCN Round 1, but how else did you expect the game designers to balance the game with the UK???  Traditionally, the UK always took a pounding from German navy and air G1 in every single iteration of Axis and Allies.  But they still had a HUGE military advantage; just like the US, their main capital is not in range to be invaded and serves as an unstoppable base to send out units without reprisal.  The UK is realistically never under attack or threat of invasion (unless they’re really dumb with bad UK1 builds), and they get to raid the Germans at will, pretty much like every other A+A game out there, with an insane re-built navy stack, for 2/3s of the game.  Most AA50 games I played Germany usually had to abandon Russia due to UK raids into Poland or Leningrad from the Baltic, and I’d leave an inf stack in Germany just so the Brits couldn’t surprise-attack-end-the-game there.

Hell, the Denmark straits closed rule is the best thing I’ve seen in a long time towards balancing out UK’s insane naval advantage, especially for the Baltic (finally!).  It was incredibly ahistorical that the British could send its entire navy through the Straits of Denmark without worrying about mines or Luftwaffe strikes.

Well, it is historical that Italy lost or damaged most of their fleet at Taranto and that they did poorly in the Med theater. The game is already balanced with the entire RN getting sunk G1, we don’t need all of Africa falling to Italy as well

OK, now that I have finally caught up on this thread now I can make a comment.  I don’t have Europe yet and haven’t played it yet, but I have played Axis and Allies enough that I do know how this can work out. 
Calvinhobbesliker, I can’t remeber if he pointed this out orginally, has a good point with the counter attack by the German aiirforce and remainder of Italian navy.  I have a hard time seeing a bad part to this.  With that attack the allies will the out of the Med for a while, until the US arives any ways. Germany will have more than enough money to purchase enough replacement planes that they wont be hard off.  Then It isn’t like Germany lost any of its fleet in the counter attack.  The RN is gone on G1 and G2, and the German navy and airforce will still be strong enough take care of the rebuilding RN of a while.

Then Blitz you never really mention any ideas for how Italy is to recover.  The way I see for Italy to recover is this. Once the Allied ships are sunk Italy will need to take Gibralter and rebuild a few critical ships in the Med and take Egypt. I don’t really want to mention speciflics because I haven’t played yet and don’t want you guys to jump all over me if I say something wrong.

@SgtBlitz:

Calvinhobbesliker,

1. You’re up on our Global game for Russia’s turn.  Quit spending all your time whining about the Royal Navy and get to that PBF game!  I’ll never get to mess around with the US’s 82 IPCs a turn at the rate its going!

We still have a game or not?  We are in the middle of the UK turn.

If not, maybe some of the doom and gloomers about Italy on this thread would like to prove it???

I’m in the middle of a game as the Axis.  My G1 build was three subs and a bomber.  (only 6 German subs in the box btw  :x)

I put two subs into 106 against the Canadian fleet.  I put three subs against the destroyer and transport in 109.  I used a large portion of the German air force against the BB and DD in 110.  I had more then enough air force and army to get the job done in France.  I placed the three subs with the German surface fleet in 113.  UK’s European economy loses 9 IPC’s.  It’s a conservative play.  :-P

At the UK turn my opponent is faced w/ a dilemma.  He has a BS and 3 allied cruisers in harms way.  His only DD is by Gibraltar.  The subs are immune to attack unless he uses it.  The German surface fleet is safe from attack as well.  He has 6 subs, a BS, a cruiser, and the Luftwaffe to contend w/ the next turn with two more submarines over by Canada.

So my opponent picks up the aircraft carrier over by Gibraltar, taps it thoughtfully against the board a couple of times…… and then moves it to atack the subs in 109.  The 56 IPC navy left up by England was too much to ignore for him.  Still playing the game.  Thought I’d share.