Italy a bad design

@plumsmugler:

@bugoo:

1. Control of Gibralter.  There are many ways for germany to get boats into the med.  If both G and I have boats in the med and transports, they can continually trade gibralter to prevent the allies from entering the med.

I totally agree.  Based on the Straights of Gibraltar rule, it is much wiser for Italy to either hold Gibraltar or trade it back and forth.  This way they don’t have to have a mega-fleet to offset the American one.  They will still need some boats to protect their transports from air attack but they don’t need an uber-fleet.

How is it possible for Germany have the points to do all this plus hold off the Russians and cover West Germany/Denmark against the brits?  Where does Italy find the pts to do Gibraltar trading if it’s stuck at 10-14 pts and it’s fleet is sitting at the bottom of the Med?  The US can come at Gibraltar on T4 with 150 pts of fleet and units with more arriving each successive turn.  It looks wiser to me to have Germany concentrate its army in W Germ, Denmark and South Germany to counterattack after any allied landing and to just say to hell with Gibraltar.

Maybe Gibraltar should not have a naval base? Malta got downgraded, so why not Gibraltar as well……

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.

I think Italy sucking and France getting smoked in the first round have nothing to do with whether or not the game is broken…sure there are some weaker powers, but what really matters is there about a 50/50 chance of the axis or the allies winning.  Yea the Italian situation sucks, but maybe it can be fixed by using submarines to disable the carrier.

You mean make a suckable, WW2 1940 suckie power not suck. Italy was meant to suck, just like France. This whole Italy sucking making the game broken is ridiculous. The real question would be what ability does Germany have to get in there and help. Or should they at all. Those questions can only be answered with years of play. Declaring the game to being broken this soon is beyond foolish, it’s laughable.

With that said, I have been a player since the 1980’s and understand how broken each new version was and how hard it seemed to be for them to fix it. No Pacific naval battles, China being to weak, (still is) ect…

The best we can hope for is to only have to slightly tweak the game for realism and fair play. For instance, letting China go first and perhaps a J1 attack being a mistake, now that Germany will feel the consequences in the Global game.

Seriously why not take away Gibraltar’s air and naval bases. Would it really have a huge impact on what the allies are able to do? Whereas it might mean that the Italians actually have a chance of doing something in their first turn. Meanwhile even without the Naval Base the UK carrier and destroyer can still get back to Britain or join up with the French fleet. It may not be historically accurate, but is there any other way that does not upset the balance of the game even more?

@Blitz:

@MODEL:

Seriously why not take away Gibraltar’s air and naval bases. Would it really have a huge impact on what the allies are able to do? Whereas it might mean that the Italians actually have a chance of doing something in their first turn. Meanwhile even without the Naval Base the UK carrier and destroyer can still get back to Britain or join up with the French fleet. It may not be historically accurate, but is there any other way that does not upset the balance of the game even more?

I think the Airbase is fine in Gibraltar. The Naval yard however is the source of a lot of grievance. If UK purchases one in round 1,2, or 3 it will still be valuable and will prevent Italy from ending up at bottom of sea before it goes. Or maybe even just having the Italian fleet in one bulk like the 1941 scenario on TripleA. There are many ways of making the Africa battle actually happen. Changes just need to be agreed upon.

Italy sadly was one of the Nations myself and many others were looking forward to playing with. Balance issues were bound to become known with new games such as Global and unfortunately Italy gets the worst of it. Larry must have miscalculated the ease of UK taking out the Italian fleet. I can see why, cause judging from initial setup it looks impressive.

Exactly, I really think this might be one of the easiest ways to save the Italians from just sitting around unable to do anything all game

And what is japan doing while the UK completely abandons the pacific?  Or are you just using starting boats to kill the Italy navy off after T1?  Because I can easily see Japan taking India, Pearl, and ANZAC around J3, J5 at the latest if India is abandoned.

And even if they loose that half of there fleet, that means the UK will only have a handful of boats on the board after G2, and will be incapable of doing anything out of London until the US gets there, or watch it go down to the bottom from German air.

Also, they still have a dd/cru/trans left, they can add another dd, take greece and southern france, and on I2 drop a carrier if its really needed.  They also start out with a unit advantage in northern africa to begin with.  It will be at the earliest UK3 that the brits have any new units in the med to hit them with anyway.

I like the choice that is available for the UK in the early game, do you waste a carrier to slow down Italy, or keep it to threaten northern germany much quicker.

Not sure what happened to my post but here goes again. This is going to be less informative and more to the point as I don’t have time and I spent some time on the post that seemed to disappear.

AA not meant to go the way it historically did

It is meant to accurately reflect the situation at the time.

Italy made a miniscule contribution. Performed so horribly, in Africa and balkans Germany had to do what they couldn’t. Italy being so weak is accurate. Depending on how you see the turns in terms of time length, you can argue if they should be irrelevant on turn 1, 2, or 3.

As long as Germany can do its part and have a reasonable chance of taking North Africa, game is not broken.

It is way to soon to determine that.

Italy should be played by the German player in a multi player game.

@eddiem4145:

Not sure what happened to my post but here goes again. This is going to be less informative and more to the point as I don’t have time and I spent some time on the post that seemed to disappear.

AA not meant to go the way it historically did

It is meant to accurately reflect the situation at the time.

Italy made a miniscule contribution. Performed so horribly, in Africa and balkans Germany had to do what they couldn’t. Italy being so weak is accurate. Depending on how you see the turns in terms of time length, you can argue if they should be irrelevant on turn 1, 2, or 3.

As long as Germany can do its part and have a reasonable chance of taking North Africa, game is not broken.

It is way to soon to determine that.

Italy should be played by the German player in a multi player game.

I guess its not really about Italy being ‘too weak’, from the looks of it Italy starts out fairly well, quite a few ships in the Med, respectable land forces in North Africa, what bothers people is the fact that Italy can start out in this reasonable good position and then suddenly be reduced to impotence, before they get a chance to do anything. How in this game can we really expect the German player to be able to help out that much, the Germans seem to be effectively shut out from the Med at the start, leading me to believe that the designers intended it to be Italy’s role to deal with the Med and Africa, but if their ships can be destroyed before they have a chance to move……

It also seems a bit frustrating that the French fleet in the Med can be saved by the UK, but the Italians have no hope, how can the Germans save then on turn 1?

The Axis should have a chance to take the French fleet in the Med(die roll for each ship…maybe 50/50?).  Thats why the UK attacked it in real life.

German sub builds make taking out the Italian Navy a very low priority.  When the UK is getting convoyed for 11 IPC’s a turn and Japan is keeping the USA out of the war the Italians are free to grab Gibraltar and create a safehaven in the med.

@TitusAndronicus:

German sub builds make taking out the Italian Navy a very low priority.  When the UK is getting convoyed for 11 IPC’s a turn and Japan is keeping the USA out of the war the Italians are free to grab Gibraltar and create a safehaven in the med.

But you have just said it, if the UK does not attack the Italian fleet in turn 1 ‘the Italians are free to grab Gibraltar and create a safehaven in the med.’ Therefore why would the UK player not do this? That is the problem the UK can effectively hamstring the Italians completely in their first turn, if you were the UK wouldn’t you be willing to take a couple of turns of convoy disruption to knock-out one of your enemies?

@MODEL:

@TitusAndronicus:

German sub builds make taking out the Italian Navy a very low priority.  When the UK is getting convoyed for 11 IPC’s a turn and Japan is keeping the USA out of the war the Italians are free to grab Gibraltar and create a safehaven in the med.

But you have just said it, if the UK does not attack the Italian fleet in turn 1 ‘the Italians are free to grab Gibraltar and create a safehaven in the med.’ Therefore why would the UK player not do this? That is the problem the UK can effectively hamstring the Italians completely in their first turn, if you were the UK wouldn’t you be willing to take a couple of turns of convoy disruption to knock-out one of your enemies?

First, the Italians have two(2) fleets.  Second, the Italians can take Gibraltar on I1 if they wanted to.  Third, if you have not read the other posts on this thread, the Axis can eliminate the UK/French fleet in the Med.

Italy is not bad off at all, and if you allow them the minors in the Balkans and the NO’s they get, they can be a great help to the Germans.