Italy - short and nasty

[Hardin]

After applying the combined hotfix and speed patch my game has become much more playable. As such I decided to start with Italy to get a feel for the game and what works and what doesn't. I also wanted to see how the AI would work when left to its own devices...

The action starts in 1936.

I decided to delegate a lot more units to Tarabulus HQ (including transports) and left the AI to it when it came to Ethiopia and it didn't let me down, swiftly conquering the country but also moving the additional units to the frontline under its own steam... Nice!

I decided to puppet Ethiopia and removed all my forces from the region for refit/reorganisation. I reorganised all my Militia Brigades into 3 Mill + 1 Art divisions (I built another militia brigade) giving me 10 Militia Divisions. I created an army (East Africa Group) under the Tarabulus HQ with two corps with 5 Militia Divisions in each and shipped them back to Eritrea.

As I was going research heavy (I didn't realise until later that I needed to get my neutrality down and particularly how important leadership is) I had between 12 and 13 tech projects running at any one time - and even invested in Militia techs (I did have 30 brigades of Blackshirts after all). My main focus was inf/mil/arty + industry/theory/doctrine techs - I put none in airforce and very little in navy...

Anyway I got invited to the AXIS early. I reorganised my armies in Italy into 3 armies - West, East and South. West & East were intended to be my offensive forces with South given duties to protect the coasts/borders. South was also give control of my Navy and Transports).

By 1939 South consisted of four corps with 5 Inf Divs in each (all with an artillery brigade). East and West each consisted of 5 Corps with 5 Divs in each (a total of 50 divs). I had also set up a North Africa Group in Libya under the Tarabulus HQ. This comprised 4 corps with 5 Inf divs in each corp.

Anyway I put the AI in charge of all the various armies.

- East - Given Marseille and various other Southern French VP territories on Blitz stance.

- West - Given Paris and various VP provinces enroute on attack stance

- South - Defensive stance and assigned various borders and ports to protect

- North Africa - Attack stance - objectives El Iskandriya (Alexandria) and Tunis

- East Africa - Attack stance - Given Khartoum and various other provinces as targets

Anyway Germany dutifully attacked Poland in mid-39. However for some reason that did not put me at war with the allies??? I then tried to declare war - at which point I suddenly discovered what this threat/neutrality thing was :wacko: Anyway I hurriedly put some leadership points into lowering my neutrality *ooops*

With East and West Groups sitting on border twiddling thumbs and a 55 vs 28 Neutrality/Threat against British/French I decided to look elsewhere for action. A quick look around revealed that I could declare war on the Yugoslavs so I hurriedly shifted my armies over and assigned West with inland objectives on 'attack stance' including Belgrade - whilst East was assigned a variety of VP objectives along the coast on 'blitz'. Meanwhile South (which was on defensive) had automatically garrisioned several of the Italian pockets along the coast - including Albania.

I mobilised and put as many points into reinforcement as I could. Within a week my armies were sufficiently built up and I declared war. To be honest the AI waltzed through Yugoslavia which was simply unprepared for a 50 division offensive. I then got the trigger for the Greek event and continued the Southwards progress. After annexing both Yugoslavia and then Greece I suddenly noticed my dissent shooting up - oh bugger - I have fully mobilised armies, no war and CG demand going through the roof!

As my spies had by this time reduced my neutrality significantly I immediately declared war on France - big mistake! My main armies - East and West - were still in Yugoslavia and Greece - which were also suffering a series of revolts!

(As an aside does anyone know how Garrison Divisions work now? I built 5 (2 Gar/2 Pol) divisions and put them in Yugoslavia/Greece but they didn't seem to reduce partisan/revolt risk - is there something I am missing?)

I had hoped that Army South which was on defensive stance would delay the French while East & West moved into position however it seemed that the Yugoslavian/Greek campaign had inspired the AI to shift bunch of units from Northern Italy to reinforce Albania and the other pockets which I had initially set as its defensive objectives.

A sole division and one HQ remained in Northern Italy and started getting pushed back by the French. Milan and Turin fell and even Venice was threatened. Fortunately however South recognised the threat and started moving units back (at some cost, which I will explain later) whilst East and West finally made it to the frontlines too.

There was some tough fighting in North Western Italy but when the French broke the floodgates opened and Italian divisions streamed across France. Indeed some even made it as far as Barcelona (Nat Spain joined the allies).

The French eventually started moving divisions off the Belgian border (despite everyone else joining the allies Belgium and Holland didn't and nor did the Germans attack them ) and Maginot line - which prompted the Germans to breakthrough. France was annexed by Vichy France - leaving a pocket of Italian forces trapped in North Eastern Spain!

Anyway while all this was happened I realised another drawback of AI control. As mentioned earlier I had assigned my transports and Navy to Army South so that it could shift troops to defend the objectives that I had given it (Albania/Sardina etc.) however I forgot to take this control back after declaring war on the Allies and it seems that the AI isn't very good at protecting transports - with 4 of my 6 sunk before I realised what was happening!

I then discovered that my East African Army (10 militia divisons) was starving and being pushed back by the French and English from Sudan and Dijbouti. I decided to send the complete Army to Ethiopia as an Expeditionary Force. It was either that or watch them all die through lack of supply... Fortunately Ethiopia was able to make better use of them than I was and succeeded in halting the British advance in the area.

Meanwhile my North Africa Group (20 divisions) had quickly captured Tunis and were also advancing towards El Iskandriya (Alexandria). The initial battle at El Iskandriya was won by British and Iraqi forces but under its own initiative the North African AI outflanked them and even sent an expeditionary force Southwards along the Nile towards Sudan/Ethiopia. Another attack was launched and the port swiftly fell to jubilant Italians.

Unfortunately the Italian Navy was not being so successful. As mentioned previously I had assigned my naval forces to Army South's control and it was making a total hash of things. 6 heavy cruisers and a variety of smaller craft were lost in the opening months of the war with little damage done to allied shipping.

This prompted me to claim all naval and air units back from the AI and I reorganised the (heavily damaged) Regia Marina into a more effective force. This dramatically reduced Italian losses and resulted in the Allies losing many more transports.

And that is where I am up to now.

Next objective is to safely transport Army West to Barcelona to reinforce and then breakout of the Spanish pocket with the ultimate goal of putting Nat Spain and Portugal out of the war and seizing Gibraltar. I will also be hoping the North Africa Group AI will continue its good progress by siezing the Suez canal and linking up with Ethiopian forces.

Time will tell!

(No screenies atm as I wrote this at work and game is at home Will probably post some tonight - if I don't spend all my time playing! Happy to answer any questions though)

 

[Lordban]

You're off to a rather nice start, in spite of some dangerous mistakes (good thing the FRA AI left the Maginot empty and that GER AI took advantage of it!)

GER declares a limited war on POL, not a full-blown one, so you're not invited to take your part in the fun. This is historically correct. What isn't is when GER AI ends up spamming everybody else with calls to arms within a couple of weeks

And yes, naval combat in HoI 3 hurts. A lot. Especially since the bigger ships aren't exactly cheap. If you can manage better than the AI, you definitely don't want it to mess it up for you!

 

[unmerged(137040)]

Hey Hardin, same one from Scrapheap Challenge? (If so, Hatepeace Lovewar here o/).


I've little experience with actual Garrison or Police as i've only played the game so far with the UK and it's on 1940.

Nice to see the AI doing so well in North Africa, i actually took control of that theater and left Easter africa up to the AI (i hated fighting the East African campaign on HOI 2).

I imagine capturing the Suez and Gibralta (and maybe Malta?) should pretty much deliver Africa to yourself and force out the RN from the med, that being said you may have to deal with the RN (and eventually the USN), so i'm assuming your expanding the RM?

Good read so far, will keep an eye on this, be interesting to see how the likes of Japan and that do with the fix applied (have they joined the Axis yet?).

 

[Hardin]

@ HMS Warspite:

Yes same as from Scrapheap

I haven't really put much effort into the RM so far. I have improved some of the cruiser/destroyer/submarine techs and built around 5 of each. I have not built any capital ships or done any research in this field

Re. the Far East - Japan hasn't joined the Axis. TBH I was so caught up in my own 'Theatres' that I haven't been paying much attention. From what I can remember Nat China/Japan were in stalemate in Mankucho, with a small Japanese landing in the Shanghai area. But will report on that Front in more detail when I look at the saved game later!

@ Lordban:

Yes some real facepalm mistakes. I had read on here so many times about the need to reduce neutrality but had assumed this was mainly about implementing better laws. As this is my first proper game I never really conceived of the need as Italy has decent mobilisation options from the start. I had also assumed that being part of the Axis I would simply get dragged in when the time came. Oooops!

Another thing I still haven't played with is the whole 'Diplomacy/Influencing' concept. As mentioned I just stuck the majority of my leadership points into Tech research and basically ignored espionage and diplomacy. Similarly I also under resourced my 'officer training' which has resulted in an army that only has between 45 & 50% of its required officers. Busy correcting that atm

Out of interest where do you get the option to change/promote officers? I click on their portraits as I used to do in HOI2 but this doesn't do anything. I did read the manual but it's possible I need to read it again

 

[Lordban]

You'll want to click on their names on the right of their portraits in the division display.

The list of available Generals pops up; you have two arrows at the end of each line to promote/demote them to suit your needs. Note that promoting/demoting a General does not change their skill level, but it makes you lose their accumulated XP.

 

[Hardin]

Ah cool. Thanks!

One thing I forgot to mention is that I have also put research into developing radar technologies and have built a level 7 radar post in Palermo. This has proven useful in giving me some warning allied naval movements...

 

[Myth]

Certainly a few mistakes there. I'm no doubt also making a few in my Italy game, though I figured out the neutrality/threat thing earlier--I'm dedicating about .01 leadership to reducing my neutrality. I've brought it down about 10 points (I think) in a year.

 

[Hardin]

Following the 'Fall of France' and the creation of the Vichy Republic in mid-1941 a lot of reorganisation had to take place - particularly as much of my army was relocating out of France.

More pressing however was the fact that 4 divisions and a HQ were stuck in North East Spain with the entire Nationalist Spanish army bearing down upon them.

I immediately regrouped my 'West' Army in Genoa with the intention of launching an amphibious invasion of Barcelona and hooking up with my stranded divisions.

Unfortunately, for no reason that I could work out, neither my Transport Fleet or the RM (which was escorting) would enter the Ligurian Sea. I tried rebase orders, move orders and even simply right clicking and all I got was a nice red X. It wasn't as if they would refuse to enter the port, they quite simply refused to enter the sea province adjoining the port. I have no idea why my Naval Commanders so blatantly refused to cooperate but by the time I had relocated some divisions to a port that my Navy would enter (Napoli) the Nat. Spanish army had overwhelmed my meagre Expeditionary force...

The last battle was fought in Andorra - where my out of supply divisions laid down their arms and surrendered. Nevertheless their sarcrifice had not been in vain. The distraction the caused diverted enough Spanish troops from the border in the Pamplona area that German forces managed to break through despite the adverse terrain. By November 1941 the Germans have captured approximately a third of Nat. Spain's territory in a rough line from Valencia on the Mediterranean to Oviedo on the Bay of Biscay.

While I reorganised my East, West and South armies In Italy the 20 divisions that formed my North African Army Group has continued to push the British back. After the fall of France I held on to Tunis and the AI realising that Vichy was no threat started moving reinforcements Eastwards. The additional manpower provided by this enabled Italian forces to push across the Suez canal in two provinces but as it stands the British maintain one toehold on the canal.

As you may recall I had given my East African Army which was made up of 10 divisions (Each division was made up of 3 Militia and 1 Artillery Brigades) over to Ethiopian command as I had been having problems supplying them prior to my capture or Egypt. Anyway the Ethiopians had made good use of them and proceeded to link up with elements of the North African Army in Sudan. Advance Ethiopian elements have pushed into Kenya although there are still ongoing battles with French and British units in Somalia and Dijbouti. As a land link has now opened up to Ethiopia I am tempted to reclaim my East African Army form the Ethiopians but am reluctant to do so as they Ethiopian AI has been using them well and figting in Central Africa is such a chore!

At sea I have added an additional 3 Light Cruisers and 2 Destroyers to the RM with more on order. After the poor beginning of its campaign (4 Transports and 6 Heavy Cruisers lost in the opening month) the RM has mainly been port bound conducting repairs to many of the other heavily damaged ships. I expect the remaining 4 battleships and 2 heavy cruiser to sally out shortly with their much enhanced and improved escort. My 13submarines have also lacked success with only a couple of transport kills between them!

I have not as yet built any additional aircraft and am still utilising the airforce that I started out with which is increasingly dated and under equipped - primarily because I have been concentrating on land and light navy techs.

My army now consist of 416 Brigades - 200 of which are standard infantry brigades with 100 artillery brigades. I also have 30 HQ brigades and 32 Garrison/Police brigades!

Due to losses in Spain I am reinforcing my East West Armies to 25 divisions each and will then decide on the next target unless other things intervene (such as a Soviet/German war kicking off). I may just take out Holland/Belgium because as it stands approximately half the German army is garrisoning their borders :wacko:

The US did launch D-Day a little early in July 1941 utilisng a few armoured divisions and some Liberian Brigades but the German AI crushed them with ease. However the German AI didn't learn its lesson and is refusing to garrison to the coast - presumably because a large chunk of its army is fighting in Spain and the rest thinks that the Belgians are Dutch are the main threat to the Reich! Unless I (or the Germans) do something about that there is a major risk that half Germanys army could be stranded in Spain if the allies mount a well supported invasion of the La Rochelle/Bordeaux area that reaches the Vichy border (not beyond the realms of possibility)

Elsewhere Nationalist Spain - not content with fighting the Italians and Germans successfully puppeted Finland! :rofl: I don't know when the Spanish invaded, I presume it was before they got attacked by myself and the Germans - but I really did expect the Finns to do a bit better.

Allies current comprises 26 nations. Axis is just myself, Germany, Ethiopia and Slovakia. Japan has yet to enter the war (it is only Nov 1941 however). Nat. Chines forces are continuing to push in Manchukuo and have reached the borders of Korea. The Japanese excursion to Shanghai has been destroyed!

Was going to add some screenshots but can't for the life of my figure out where they get saved when you press F11/F12. Any suggestions?

 

[Myth]

My goodness, the politics in this game sounds complicated indeed. Nationalist Spain hostile to Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany? Nationalist Spain puppeting Finland? Oh wait, its just Nationalist Spain then. Crush them!

As for screenshots, unless you have vista and its putting them in the darkest dankest corners of your hard drive, they should be in your HoI3 directory, folder called Screenshots.

 

[Lordban]

Complicated indeed. And Spain destroying your forces. That's gratitude for you. Vichy's in the way, but you might as well DoW them and show Franco what the Italian army is really made of.


(Regarding the screenshots, if you do have Vista, either you're lucky and they're stored next to the savegames - search for *.hoi3 files to find them - or you're going to have to dig through User\Documents or User\AppData\Local and Roaming )

 

[Hardin]

(Regarding the screenshots, if you do have Vista, either you're lucky and they're stored next to the savegames - search for *.hoi3 files to find them - or you're going to have to dig through User\Documents or User\AppData\Local and Roaming )

Thanks for that. Jeez they are well hidden aren't they...

Anyway here is a map screenshot I took back in November '41. Have progressed beyond that point now and am now (March '42) on borders of Iraq and preparing to Dec Holland/Belgium. Nat Spain has been puppeted by the Germans. Have to actually check what's happened to Finland now as they were a puppet on Nat. Spain - so wonder if they still are - and if they are still part of Allies...

 

[Lordban]

I heartily recommend installing highly moddable games like PI's outside the Program Files directory when running Vista, it insists doggedly on taking out of it anything which remotely resembles parameters and/or saves.


Well-l-l that's a rather interesting map you have here. Japan didn't get herself totally humiliated in China, Franco seems to be getting his just deserts, and there's actually a lot more olive-green on that map than there is gray. Good progress in Africa!

Are you going to disregard International Law regarding borders in Iraq and Persia too?

 

[Myth]

You've got a pretty decent empire going there, I'd say.

 

[Hardin]

Well, after I invade Holland and Belgium, I may turn my attentions to Bulgaria and then Turkey. As RM is performing so badly and being underinvested it may be useful to have overland supply lines to my divisions in Africa.

The Ethiopians commanding my East African Army (10 Militia Divisions) still seem to be making slow but steady progress and my North African Army (20 Divs) is racing for Baghdad. Once that falls I can either task it to assist with the invasion of Turkey or move it southwards to speed the growth of my African Empire.

Apart from its disastrous control of my Navy the AI has performed admirably when I have set it specific objectives...

 

[Hardin]

Late in 41' I declared war on the Benelux nations. I did not even bother to send troops to the front line as the Germans still had them surrounded by a massive force. They fell swiftly.

Next target was Bulgaria which was the target of my East and West armies
(50 divisions). Bulgaria was taken by surprise and fell swiftly. A similar result was achieved with Turkey which also fell swiftly.

By this stage I had two main problems

1) Partisans cropping up everywhere

2) My lack of investment of leadership points in officer training meant that I was down to a 40% ration. The Italian army was on the point of rebellion.

As mentioned previously I had built a number of garrison divisions to control partisans but these seemed to have no effect on reducing revolt risk. I switch tactic and started building dedicated anti-partisan divisions consisting of cavalry and military police.

These were very effective but were quite busy! I found that about 5 anti partisan 'Cav' dvisions spread out across each conquered country really reduced the time spent chasing partisans around as there was always one within 4/5 provinces of an uprising!

Anyway in Africa I was pressing on slowly and surely with the assistance of the Ethiopians who were starting to have manpower issues.

However as I pushed down the continent supply lines became increasingly stretched. By the time I had reached the northern provinces of South Africa my units were hardly moving! :wacko: This made it a priority to capture a port which I did at Walvis Bay - unfortunately this did not prompt the AI to ship supplies to my starving troops. On reflection I wonder if it would have made any difference if I had manually created a convoy to Walvis Bay - but I doubt it.

My next conquest was Vichy France which capitulated quickly. Landings in key provinces in North Africa prompted Vichy to surrender fairly rapidly - giving me a whole swathe of African territory - with no garrisons! However the British seemed to be suffering supply problems of their own and made extremely poor progress in enlarging their footholds in Nigeria and Ghana.

Meanwhile the German had taken the initiative and launched an invasion of India. As it was a German led operation I didn't pay too much attention but noticed after about six months that it had stopped making progess and realised that the German units were out of supply (they were all on about 35% strength). This prompted me to declare war on Persia in order to create a land connection to the Germans (although I had no idea if that would actually help them). It turned out that Afghanistan had joined the allies some time back - so they got conquered in the process.

At sea the Mediterranean was an Italian lake - apart from two British CAGs - which simply wouldn't die to RM. My naval bombers also made no progress on them due to the fact that I had done no research whatsoever on airforce upgrades/equipment :wacko:

What I had put a lot of research into was DD/Cruiser/Submarine doctrines. I had wolfpacks operating around the British Isles but didn't seem to sink too much - although the submarines were extremely resilient and suffered few losses even operating in the Channel and Irish Sea.

In 1944 I invaded Hungary and Romania. Romania collapsed quickly but Hungary put up a bit of a fight for a while, until the Germans also got involved. Meanwhile my army in Africa was barely making any progress at all and the South Africans were still holding on along the coast. I attempted an ambipious invasion of Durban from Madagascar (which I had inherited from Vichy) - but the intervention of 1 British ship (HMS Barham BB) singlehanded sunk 5 RM ships despite 3 Italian fleets (4 BBs and 6 HC + support) involved in the battle

Not only did he sink five ship - but in the process of disrupting the invasion my 12 invasion brigades 'disappeared' (even though no transports were sunk)...

Any with this failure I bit the bullet and started building a railroad (level 10 infrastructure) from El Iskadriya in Egypt the whole way to South Africa (Cecil Rhodes would have been proud) in order to supply my troops.

On September 2nd 1945 I suffered my first CTD. Luckily I had an autosave on the 1st September. Here is the global map on 1st September:



Anyway I reloaded 1st September and then this happened on the 2nd:



For some reason German agreed a truce with the UK. Not only did this give the UK back all the territory I had been conquering but also meant that 3/4 of my armies were now out of supply in other countries or cut off in British territory (the Brits immediately declare war again). I reloaded 1st Sept 3 times but the 'truce' happened each time :wacko:

Anyway, I cannot bear to spend time going back to an older save (it wasn't exactly going very fast by 1945) nor can I be bothered to try and extricate all my armies from hostile territory.

It seem that Mussolini has been shamelessly let down by the spineless German Fuhrer!

 

[Myth]

Betrayed! Once you salvage your armies, I suggest punishing Hitler!

 

[Hardin]

Well I am not going to even try. My war is over It is up to you Myth to demonstrate the true capabilities of the Italians.

I had been planning to provoke a war with the Soviet Union once South Africa and India had fallen. I built some radar stations on the former Romanian/SU border and the number of units there was immensely scary!

Some final points

German conqured and puppeted Norway and also annexed Sweden and Finland. The US seemed to be almost totally absent - apart from a few half hearted landings in Brittany...

You will note the Japanese/Nat Chines borders hadn't changed from my original screenshot - it seemed they had agreed a truce. Japan didn't attack Pearl Harbour and the only offensive actions they undertook was cooperating with Thailand to take Indochina off me (another territory I inherited from Vichy). New Zealand grabbed Noumea about 1 day after I annexed Vichy

 

[Lordban]

Punishing AI-tler would have been in order!

Your Italia seems to have been a bit of a rampaging beast...

One quick word of advice: when posting world maps and other wide screenies, you should scale them down a bit - else your text sprawls over the same width, and unless you have a very high resolution you have to keep scrolling horizontally

 

[Insignificant]

In the first picture whats the splotch in Nat. China, Germany?

 

[Hardin]

Think it is a 'lake'

Starngely enough in my most recent game Japan annexed and puppeted Nat. China very early on. Then Guangxi Clique conquered Nat China territory, Manchuckuo and Korea :rofl:

The black spots in the Italian 'dark green' were caused by rampaging partisans. The partisans in central Africa were not worth chasing to be honest.