Mare Nostrum

@Afrikakorps:

Collect Income
$17 Income

Quite often Italy collects less than 10 IPCs income on turn 1. Often there is a UK carrier and a couple other ships in sz 97. Sometimes 1 fighter on the carrier. So, a lot of Italy’s money is convoyed turn 1. This of course effects their following purchases ect….

NOTE: I assume standard Toronto play with 2/3 of Italy fleet defeated. In case of UK opening moves, this strategy can work out differently based on other opportunities.

Do also assume the axis get a bid in G40 and that money goes to some Italian naval assets? like say bid at 12-20?

It’s ‘Taranto’, not ‘Toronto’. Taranto is in Italy. Toronto is in Canada.

@Afrikakorps:

Italian Builds
I1: Transport
I2: Minor Factory in Greece
I3: Airbase in Greece, 2 Transports in S100
I4: More Troops

Italy Turn 1

Purchase new units
1 Transport

Combat Movement
Greece with 1 Bomber, 1 Tank, 2 Infantry
Yugoslavia with 2 Artillery, 2 Infantry
Gibraltar with 1 Tank, 1 Infantry
Tunisia with 1 Mech, 1 Artillery, 1 Infantry
Alexandria with 1 Tank, 1 Artillery, 3 Infantry
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan with 2 Infantry, 1 Artillery
Kenya with 1 Infantry
S93 with 2 Fighters, 1 Destroyer, 1 Submarine
S92 with 1 Cruiser, 1 Transport (1 Tank, 1 Infantry

Although I have only just registered, your post sparked my interest since I love tinkering with strategies in the Med and the Middle East ever since starting to play this game. This certainly is an unorthodox idea, even for me!  :-P
I do have a couple of questions though. Mainly because you assume both a very passive British player and, it seems, some very lucky dice rolls on your part.

On your first move, you try to take Greece with your Strat Bomber and the troops from Albania. That is a battle of two 1’s, a 3 and a 4 against four 2’s. Not very much in your favour… yet detrimental to your entire plan should it fail. Now you mention you do not like calculating battles, but if I put this one through the calculator anyway, you only have a 65% win. What’s more, the average unit left is close to 1, meaning you will have to sacrifice your Strat Bomber most of the time in order to claim Greece. That does not make for a very good Italian first turn I would say.

Furthermore, you plan to take Algeria, which will by then have 2 French Inf, with your leftover(!) troops from Tunisia: 1 Mech, 1 Inf, 1 Art. Not only is that fight only marginally in your advantage again, this is assuming you lost nothing before. If you did, its at best an equal fight, at worst a French overweight.

There are more examples of this, but you get the general idea now.

Besides this tendency to overestimate your own rolls and underestimate any possible counter moves, you also make some straight out errors. As pointed out by others here, there is likely a left-over British fleet in S97. I assume the Luftwaffe takes this out for you? This does however mean like they pointed out, that you gain less income and cannot possibly build a transport in S97 on I1 right - unless I am mistaken and missed some rule?

Last, I am puzzled as to what Germany does exactly. You mention building a transport on G2. Then how does Germany do an attack on G3 with 4 infantry?

Agreed with your observations of assuming a passive UK opponent along with good luck roles. Knowing my typical round 1 luck, Italy would get one hit in Greece while the defenders get two. Now you are mad as heck because the territory is going to be a pain to capture and you missed out on a bunch of income. Also, having the UK do nothing in the Horn of Africa in the first round is uncommon.

Throwing in reality, I only see Egypt fall 5% of matches between good opponents. It usually only happens when there is awful luck. I don’t see anything special in this plan that would give it a much higher probability.

Afrika Korp, I like your energy and atypical thinking. It can take you far when you more thoroughly probe outcomes. Don’t expect to find an amazing plan where you likely look at the board on turn 4 and say, I WIN. Instead search for strats that give you a minor tactical edge early in the game that can be slowly widened to a strong position by turn 7 or so. Often the game is not determined until Turn 14-17 when luck hasn’t tipped the match one way or another. I know that you detest TripleA and fully recognize that face to face matches are more fun. Having said that, the only way to get bovine-level openings is through countless matches against good opponents. Players will carefully battlecalc exactly how many troops need to end up in Egypt on turns 2 and 3. Just one more fighter or a couple infantry can make a huge change.

He likes to blog about the game and mix history with it. It’s a form of entertainment I suppose, as opposed to siting down and playing!

I started playing through the strategy with a relative standard UK move in the Med area:  a successful Taranto sunk the SZ97 fleet with the loss of a cruiser (about average).  Ethiopia also fell on UK1, with the help of a transport from India along with a cruiser bombard.  Net cost: 1 infantry.

Italy responded with the proposed I1 move, succeeding with a lucky Greece attack but failing badly in Yugo with the very weak amount of forces sent in there.  Tunisia fell with no casualties.  At the end of turn 1, Italy collected 7 PUs.  Convoy raids cost 5.  This leads them with too little money to buy that planned I2 factory in Greece.

By turn 2, I have the following Allied forces in Egypt: 7 inf + 1 mech + 3 art + tank + tac + 2 fighter + bomber

If Italy attacks on I2, there still will be 9 units left in Egypt.  Building an Allied airbase in Egypt also wrecks the plan.  Now on to Germany:  you will likely to have lost 4 planes during the first couple of rounds of attacks.  That leaves you with 9 German planes.  I also only see one transport that can reach Egypt on G3.  There is a good chance that you could take the territory IF you are willing to sacrifice your entire German air force to achieve the goal.

Delay the attack by another round and the Uk forces in Egypt will grow much bigger with additional fighters flown in and ground troops transported over.  You aren’t taking it unless you devote almost nothing into the Russia campaign.  I don’t think that is a wise plan since you also have to deal with America who can build mostly transports because Germany sacrificed too many planes.

Perhaps you can explore the details of building an aircraft carrier on G1, bringing it into the Med by G3, and then launching attacks of opportunity starting on G4.  If you can keep the Med clear, you get an Axis bonus, can deny UK a bonus, and prevent those pesky convoy raids against Rome.

Perhaps he doesn’t build with Italy on I1, which would give him enough for a factory in Greece. But why bother? He already has a 13 unit capacity in sea zones 96 and 97…

Baffled…

G1 attack the UK cruiser for the med, S110, S111, S106. Reinforce Tobruk with two fighters. I could also reinforce Italy with 2 fighters and a tactical for scrambling. Especially with the cruiser taken out this might complicate things for the UK1.

You attack S110, S111 with what?

How can 2 German fighters make it to Tobruk, 2 fighters to Southern Italy and one Tactical to Southern Italy? None of these planes can attack 110/111.

I do this G1 as well and the Death Star clears out the Med!

My opponents won’t play Allies unless they have a 24 bid now a days.

It is really hard to bust Egypt when the Allies place 2 subs 2 Arty 1 mech

Again, you are spreading yourself way too thin here!

S111 = 1 sub, 1 battleship, 1 fighter, 1 tactical bomber

-> Scottish Fighter Scrambles, making it a fight slightly in the favour of the British. (2, 4, 3, 4 against 2, 3, 4 and 4, but you will lose one 4 if your fighter has to go down).
In S110 you are bound to lose a fighter.

Normandy and especially Southern France are gambles and you will likely lose a lot in France itself especially if that AA hits something. S91 is not in your favour either.

Not to mention that in this plan you would be sending 3 German transports without any form of escort down. With the RAF (or even the French fighter from London) looking for every opportunity to take that down, you would only really be safe if you stuck to Italian seas and a scramble there. But then, that defeats the purpose of sending them down in the first place.

Not to mention this would all leave London free to do as it pleases with 2 transports and 2 destroyers left and no real worries about the Luftwaffe which you send down to the Med. And Russia might also just go more aggressive as long as it sees you are not in a position to attack yet and stack on your border.

Do not get me wrong, I favour an empower Italy strategy. But you try to do everything at the same time and that usually means all will fail or succeed with marginal troops left over. The advantage that Axis turn 1 have is a sheer might of numbers. Do not easily discard that in your plans. Overpower, do not go for even fights where the allies stand a chance with a good roll of the dice.

I love the idea of a strong Italy and especially of exploiting the Greece / Black Sea connection, but your battleplan just doesn’t sound practical to me. Some other commenters have touched on some important reasons why the Allies will almost always win against your Mare Nostrum plan, including (a) Taranto attack drains Italy’s income, (b) UK Atlantic fleet left free to plunder Norway, © high chance of losing battles against UK fleets with so many planes down south, and (d) Moscow is probably safe if you sacrifice that many planes against Egyptian ground units.

Here are two more reasons that I don’t see in the comments yet:
(e) there’s not as much income in the Middle East as you think, especially early on, and
(f) your Black Sea fleet is very insecure, and
(g) Allies can fly fighters to Moscow via the northern route.

So, don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of money in the Middle East, but maybe not as much as you think. New Roman Empire is 5 bucks, Persian Oil is 6 bucks if you get all three territories, and Egypt + Jordan + Syria + Iraq + Persia = 8 bucks. So that’s 19 bucks a turn. You’re not going to be able to break into Stalingrad / Caucasus money until later in the game, if at all, because there are just too many territories in the way. If you’re taking Egypt on I4, then even with perfect can-openers, that means you get to Iraq on I5, Northwest Persia on I6, and you don’t get to Caucasus until I7. Income you collect on I7 doesn’t help you at all with a G8 attack on Moscow, and if you’re much later than G8, you’ve lost your window of opportunity. At that point the Americans have contained Japan and are pouring fighters into Europe.

So let’s say you collect an extra $19 per turn on I4, I5, I6, and I7. That’s less than 80 bucks. If you throw away 8 German planes to take Egypt (easy enough to do when there are 12 land units defending Egypt), then there’s your $80 right there. You’re not actually making a profit here.

Next up is your Black Sea fleet, which apparently is defended by nothing more than 1 airbase with 3 German fighters. Russia starts with 3 planes. When they see you fly 3 German fighters to Greece on G3, then if they’re thinking clearly, they’ll buy 2 more planes on R3. Those planes will be perfectly helpful for trading and defense of Moscow; it’s a reasonable purchase. Then if you try dropping 2 Italian transports in the black sea on I3, then on R4 the Russians attack your transports with 5 planes, and if you scramble the 3 German fighters, then the Germans lose all 3 planes for only an average of 2 Russian planes, which is fine for Russia.

Finally, taking Cairo and Leningrad isn’t enough to stop the flow of fighters to Moscow. You need to take Archangel, which is not going to happen if you’re buying bombers and sending your planes south. Planes from a London airbase can reach Archangel in one move, and then can fly to Moscow from there – there’s no requirement that Allied planes flow through Egypt / the Mideast.

@Cow:

My opponents won’t play Allies unless they have a 24 bid now a days.

It is really hard to bust Egypt when the Allies place 2 subs 2 Arty 1 mech

But busting Egypt before Moscow is a pretty non standard play. Does the second sub go into SZ91?

I do love having a lot of bombers and a couple of subs available because it makes Gibraltor a difficult spot for the U.S./UK unless they over spend (then Japan can win)

Or use bombers to sink UK transports in Southern side of Suez Canal or even in the SZ next to Ethiopia (you have to land there, but to sink 2 transports?  totally worth losing 1 bomber)

And if you’ve still got lots of bombers after round 3, you can just use them to annihilate Russia or slip a few over to China and help Japan.