Do you take Southern France as Germany or Italy?

It varies from game to game with me. However, in general I find it beneficial for Germany to take Southern France and for Italy to take Normandy. This allows me to use the factory to drop an Italian destroyer blocker following the UK’s turn, slowing down the US forces off Gibraltar.

Marsh

@SubmersedElk:

One game I played recently, Axis declined to take either Normandy or Southern France at all, which ended up being very significant later on as these factories couldn’t be used by the US or UK in the counter-invasion. It was an interesting trade-off, 5 IPC a turn sacrificed for ~5-6 turns, and in exchange those factories were useless to the Allies later on, which turned out to be fairly critical to the game’s outcome.

This is sounding interesting to me Sub.Elk.
Can you remember more details?
Did Ger player kill off the remaining Fra. Units with air?
Thank you for your answer upfront.

I played very poorly that game so I wasn’t inclined to remember the details all that well. Not saying it’s solid, just that I’ve seen it and in that one instance it worked out for Axis. I’m not a top expert on this map like some of the people here, still learning the tricks of the trade where G40 is concerned. But I thought I’d throw it out there to see if anyone else had experienced or tried it. Sure frustrated the hell out of me as Allies and messed up my US/UK invasion of Western Europe.

The reason why I am interested is simple.
While Germany took the Normandy area in WW II. to gain a quicker access into to Atl.
They were also concerned about a possible invasion possible historically.
As for G40 purpose, Normandy is not serving well for Ger. because the US will land there reenforced by UK and automatically have a base with an IC on it.
Germany is forced to fight over it sooner or later and is almost never using the Normandy as SS pen tool.
Germany in my game conquer Normandy on G2 but is not adding that much weight into my Economics.
I have to try this and see how this works out.

I say Germany always because Germany is your powerhouse as far as income, and the more income you can bring in for Germany the better chance you have of taking Russia since you can spend more, while I do like to bring an Italian Force into Russia this force is there to support the German force, take the first hits in counter attacks and keep my German units around much longer, Southern France also allows the Germans to build their own fleet to transport units to africa which can give you a big boost and can usually bring an Axis victory in the Med.