USA to Italy

Any particular fleet we should be looking at?

Is this just to take the Africa coast away from Italy or looking to attack Italy itself?

Kill Italy First.

I’ve been saying that for a long time and it’s the goal of both my US and UK strategies. When you hit with both you can take N. Italy and S. Italy on the same turn which makes it impossible for Germany to take back. Rome is not Berlin or Tokyo but you might be amazed at how quickly the game turns into the Allies favour when you take the little brother out back behind the woodshed and take his lunch money for the rest of the game. It’s almost impossible to stop them from doing it if they make a concerted effort. Other than sending a ton of German troops down to Italy early and not to the Russian front, the only way to try and stop it is doing Sealion. It’s as close to a guaranteed win for my Allies as you can get if Germany does Sealion.

Kill Italy First!!

losing italy does little, the can opener is already on the way

the allies can do this with 100% commit without much trouble, but it leads to a deeper and deeper boondoggle while japan gets threshold and they dismantle russia 3 v 1

A KIF is allways nice but also ugly.
If you fail it will also mean that you are a couple of rounds behind on Euro side.

Please outline the minimum purchase for Naval and Invasion forces for the US, Cow.
The rest is of course depending on the occuring situations.

Bmbr buy will be 4-6 units i assume?

AetV

Ok, let’s take one of my recent Axis games. I unfortunately lost my fighters attacking the French fleet in SZ93 I1. No Taranto or Vichy. Buys as Italy:
I1: art, marine
I2: DD, ftr
I3: inf, 2ftrs
I4: 5inf 1ftr
I5: 6inf
I6: DD, inf, arm
I7: 4inf, ftr
I8: inf, 2art, 1ftr
I9: 3inf, DD
I10: art, ftr

Anyway, with a J2 DOW:
France1: North Italy taken!
USA2 Brazil was activated.
USA3, Gibraltar liberated,
USA4, Morocco taken. UK4 Italy’s fleet was crushed
USA5, Tobruk stack hit, at the cost of some fleet.
USA6, Land on Normandy.

Long story short, I cannot see how Italy was ever in danger of losing Rome. When USA gave up on turn 6, Italy had 10 inf +1GerInf in N Italy, 3inf 1marine 2AAA 4ftr 1bomb in S Italy. It’s 4 transports (1arm and no art) couldn’t hit either force with worthwhile odds.

What should USA do differently to take it? Bypass Brazil? Is it only a strategy for a J1 DOW game?

In my last game, the Allies went KIF but I had quite good success fighting back as the Axis by pursuing a Dark Skies strategy for Germany buying lots of strategic bombers. This enabled me to sink the American ships and keep them at bay while Moscow was steamrolled. We are not expert players and I am sure the Allies could have been more effective. Nevertheless, I think Dark Skies is a viable counter. What are your guys’ experience?

You could try the Japan/Med strategy.

J1 harbour in Hainan. No war. Fleet merge at Hainan.
J2 move whole fleet to India without war.
J3 take Persia and/or Iraq
J4 take Egypt
J5 takes the whole starting IJN into the Med

Wouldn’t you block sea zones with british if japan move to india sea zone end round 2? I would

@oysteilo:

Wouldn’t you block sea zones with british if japan move to india sea zone end round 2? I would

You can only do that by declaring war on Japan and by doing so the USA will not be involved in the war until after round 4.

I like the Italian focus on the European theater, but with an aggressive Japan that should be done quickly to at least have the US spend some in the Pacific and hold Hawaii and Sydney.

No, you put a ship in 78 and one in 79. No iraq or Persia j3

@oysteilo:

No, you put a ship in 78 and one in 79. No iraq or Persia j3

That only works if UK and Japan are at war.  If Japan didn’t declare, that means UK would have to for the blocking to work.  Once they do that, Japan can attack and it doesn’t bring the U.S. into the war early.

@oysteilo:

No, you put a ship in 78 and one in 79. No iraq or Persia j3

As long as Japan and UK are not at war, Japan may ignore UK ships. Hence they will not block any Japanese fleet movement

@Cow:

Step 1 buy naval
Step 2 buy bombers
Step 3 move naval and bombers in med sea/algeria
step 4 attack

Do it.

Cow is talking about STEP’s not rounds and about the US to Kill Ita First.
Has not much to do with Japan.
Therefore it would be interesting to know what to buy for this Step Plan starting with the minimum.
Like in every other Plan i see pro and cons…

This is an interesting idea. My first thoughts are:

1. You want to make sure that the US takes Southern Italy. The US has the money to build at the factory and the UK typically does not. This would also make it easy for the US to reinforce Egypt, the UK, and the Middle East with fighters each turn.
2. I find it hard to reconcile this with having enough force to also deprive Germany of Norway and Finland. While the Axis-to-Allies IPC swing is almost much the same, Germany having 50 IPCs and Italy having 10 is better for the Allies than Germany having 60 IPCs and Italy having none. If you do swing enough force into the Med to take Italy and also swing enough force in the North Atlantic to secure Norway, then you must be leaving the US weak in the Pacific.
3. From my experiences playing the Axis, I was quite happy to not liberate Southern Italy and just collect IPCs for Northern Italy myself (especially if I could hold Northern Italy). I haven’t seen that from the Allied perspective though.

I would want to see this in action before I made any broad commitments on how well it works though.

Marsh

@Tjoek:

@oysteilo:

No, you put a ship in 78 and one in 79. No iraq or Persia j3

As long as Japan and UK are not at war, Japan may ignore UK ships. Hence they will not block any Japanese fleet movement

You are sort of right that if british and japan are not at war then the japanese can move past those ships. However, that means they can not take Iraq/Persia J3, because they are not at war and I think that was the meaning behind the post. If Japan declares war J3, then those ships will block and prevent japan from taking Iraq/Persia

I think that’s only the case if Iraq has been taken over by the British. If it’s still a pro-Axis neutral, then Japan does not need to declare war to activate it. If for some reason you were saving it for Russia, it Japan can indeed make the Middle East interesting.

Strangely, when I tried it UK Pacific felt compelled to turtle up immediately – three loaded TTs off India and three more off Hainan, along with all the Japanese fleet, is a persuasive force – it certainly looks like you’re going to for a fast India kill, and the UK has no choice but to try to deploy it’s blockers easterly to keep those Hainan transports from making India. That leaves precious few UK ships that can block in a westerly direction unless you pull them from the Med, and that also makes life interesting in the Middle East…

There are some tradeoffs – it pulls a lot of resources away from the Pacific proper. However, when I tried it I wound up taking all of sub-Egyptian Africa and even though the Allies were doing a KJF I was still pulling in a lot of money as a result. The US was having great difficulty containing Japan because of the African money.

Marsh

@Marshmallow:

This is an interesting idea. My first thoughts are:

1. You want to make sure that the US takes Southern Italy. The US has the money to build at the factory and the UK typically does not. This would also make it easy for the US to reinforce Egypt, the UK, and the Middle East with fighters each turn.
2. I find it hard to reconcile this with having enough force to also deprive Germany of Norway and Finland. While the Axis-to-Allies IPC swing is almost much the same, Germany having 50 IPCs and Italy having 10 is better for the Allies than Germany having 60 IPCs and Italy having none. If you do swing enough force into the Med to take Italy and also swing enough force in the North Atlantic to secure Norway, then you must be leaving the US weak in the Pacific.
3. From my experiences playing the Axis, I was quite happy to not liberate Southern Italy and just collect IPCs for Northern Italy myself (especially if I could hold Northern Italy). I haven’t seen that from the Allied perspective though.

I would want to see this in action before I made any broad commitments on how well it works though.

Marsh

1 - yes
2 - no one said you would simultaneously take Norway. I think killing Italy will be challenging enough. I agree that the US will probably be weak in the Pacific while doing this.
3 - fair enough. Sounds a good decision if you weren’t going to be able to hold Rome.

I also am curious for a suggestion on how this is actually achievable. With reasonable builds in Italy, seems to me that they have enough to defend a reasonable sized invasion force.

Agreed, I think once the first round or two of can openers is produced for Germany Italy can withstand a direct assault on its own for long enough to make it very expensive for the US. If you take Norway out of the equation as well for the obvious weakness it produces in the Pacific to do both, that also frees up German air units to defend Southern Italy as well.

Still, I’d be interested to see it – I’m sure there are dynamics to it that I’m not seeing.

Marsh

Shouldn’t the Allies simply clear out the Italian ships and camp a bunch of subs off their coast so they don’t make anything?