Italy needs a complete change

[Alex_brunius]

Good for you, but statistics tell us sth different. IIRC only 5-10% of players play MP in HOI3. If you take that into account, you will understand why the prime focus is on SP experience.

Instead of asking: Why should Paradox improve MP when so few play it?
You should ask: Why should anyone play MP if Paradox doesn't improve it?

What I'm trying to say is that that percent could be much higher perhaps even without much effort from Paradox side, and MP is the single best way to increase longevity of a game, and in Paradox case get away with not having a flawless AI (which is impossible).

[Charles Reeps]

Perhaps if you didn't quote me so selectively you'd see I was talking about historical startpoints and not make a totally irrelevant complaint?

I read your post differently-perhaps selectively, thus I quoted the way I did. My apologies.

[Easo]

AI actually doesnt know how to join brigades.

[Flayer92]

One major problem here is that, following a historical course to the war, there should be a North African war going on for 2-3 years. Italy's army left to the AI alone will typically lose Libya entirely except for maybe a pocket around Tripoli within a few months. That is a problem.

Curiously though, I actually have observed a tendency for Italy to try amphibously re-invading Africa after it loses Libya if it still has enough transports and the naval war isn't completely one-sided. That at least I like.

For my games as another country, I tend to do a quick reorganization of Italy at the start by reattaching the Celere Corps (three 1xMOT, 2xCAV divisions) to Tobruch HQ. That gives Italy a mobile force in Africa that will often take them as far as Cairo and Alexandria; the British will typically counterattack and eventually drive back this offensive into Libya though. Later on, either the British will either completely take Libya or the Italians will manage to ship in enough reinforcements (including new triangular or square divisions and light tank divisions) to have another go at Egypt. Occasionally, the British won't hold Egypt well and it will fall early on.

That right there is a good range of options for how the war in North Africa should go, and attempts to re-balance Italy should focus on achieving that sort of dynamic North African front which can last for 2-3 years and have maybe a 25-30% rate of Italian victory.

[mnplastic]

Italy in my opinion needs a complete change. About 80% of the games I have played Italy gets owned in NA so hard it isn't even funny. After playing a game as Italy I discovered the issue. Italy starts with multiple divisions split into things like 2 militia brigades or 2 inf brigades. A human player obviously combines these to make a real division, however the AI Italy keeps these 2 inf/militia brigades and gets owned when facing UK tanks etc. Why is Italy such a mess in the beginning? And if this is intentional, why hasn't the AI been programmed to make real divisions instead of fighting with 2 militia brigades. I already started a thread concerning the broken German AI in FTM. Why must Italy be a mess to?

I guess this is a historical set-up. Besides, if not Germany, Italy would have been owned in NA IRL. So a real problem is Germany which do not send the Afrika Korps.

[Flayer92]

When I watch the AIs fight out a 1936 Italy vs. Yugoslavia, Greece, Austria, and Switzerland war, and this happens:





then I know Italy's got problems. I must emphasize that I had absolutely no part in the running of this war except for having Austria expedite their army to Yugoslavia so they'd actually leave their country.

[mnplastic]

Good for you, but statistics tell us sth different. IIRC only 5-10% of players play MP in HOI3. If you take that into account, you will understand why the prime focus is on SP experience.

Actually I always thought that the game was made for MP. Many of the features have no use in SP at all. For example expeditionary forces. Can you send them to AI? Do you really need espionage? AI would never offer technologies. AI does not build partisans. etc

[mnplastic]

Instead of asking: Why should Paradox improve MP when so few play it?
You should ask: Why should anyone play MP if Paradox doesn't improve it?

What I'm trying to say is that that percent could be much higher perhaps even without much effort from Paradox side, and MP is the single best way to increase longevity of a game, and in Paradox case get away with not having a flawless AI (which is impossible).

One and only thing really stopping me from playing MP is that I can not commit enough myself to play the game due to the time limit. I guess this is the main reason for most of us. SP means whenever you can and how long you can.

[Jos de trol]

And mine is just : go multiplayer !
That's a totally different experience, with a lot of fun.
If you can find the good partners, no need to worry too much about the AI, nothing is above a good old human brain.

some don't multiplay

[Cybvep]

Actually I always thought that the game was made for MP. Many of the features have no use in SP at all. For example expeditionary forces. Can you send them to AI? Do you really need espionage? AI would never offer technologies. AI does not build partisans. etc

Many of the features you mentioned were added in the expansions. Also, the AI builds partisan cells and you can give them EXP forces AFAIK. Espionage has never been properly implemented or balanced in any of the HOI games.

The vast majority of HOI3 players play SP, not MP. Many believe that the AI improvements should be the primary concern for the devs, since the AI is so important in SP...

[Redstars89]

When I watch the AIs fight out a 1936 Italy vs. Yugoslavia, Greece, Austria, and Switzerland war, and this happens:





then I know Italy's got problems. I must emphasize that I had absolutely no part in the running of this war except for having Austria expedite their army to Yugoslavia so they'd actually leave their country.

This is a perfect example of how retarded the Italy AI is. I totally understand if you want to make them weaker to reflect history, but at least give them a chance and/or brain. This game is becoming ridiculous. I might go back to Rome Total Realism.

[Chromos]

in case you are wondering I am testing out your lua files, to see how they perform and might include parts of it in a future patch if works ok (too early to tell though)

Nice!



For the design focus SP or MP.
My informations have been that way, that it has had a very strong MP focus in the past, while that only changed with around the last expansion a bit mor ein SP focus.
The reason might be in the Devs playing their games against each other more than playing it alone..

I guess this is a historical set-up. Besides, if not Germany, Italy would have been owned in NA IRL. So a real problem is Germany which do not send the Afrika Korps.

Imho that is the better point about it.
Italy was not that strong, but without the DAK-buff it will loose ground too quick.
Maybe a scriptable(of course..) solution for foreign units would help here.
Also, having Italy not into the war in '39 helps too.



For the 1936 screen..
Well, italy was not able to defeat Greece alone in RL in '40.
Why should it be able to do against even more countries in '36??


Cheers,
Chromos

[plasticpanzers]

Historically no matter how you mix it Italy was incapable of winning WW2 on its own or
even fighting well in the theaters it did engage in combat in. Its soldiers were braver
than many think but they were still a 1920s (at most) type of army and never had the
industry or organization to fight a moden war, even at the end. Small units could fight
well but in trying to make Italy a major power in the game just would tweak it all out of
balance. I know its the AI but if your playing Germany just expect to be supporting
them with troops in Europe and Russia and when you can in N. Africa but they could
never support their N. African conquests nomatter what they did as long as the UK had
the RN and India/S. Africa/Persia to base forces from on the E. side of the Med.

[Panncakemouse]

When I watch the AIs fight out a 1936 Italy vs. Yugoslavia, Greece, Austria, and Switzerland war, and this happens:





then I know Italy's got problems. I must emphasize that I had absolutely no part in the running of this war except for having Austria expedite their army to Yugoslavia so they'd actually leave their country.

I would argue that this might very well be the effect of excellent design choises by the game developers.

Italy hade huge problems in Ethiopia and, at least in part, solvbed those by use of weapons not inclided in the game.
Italy tried to go into southern France in the end of that part of WWII but failed miserably and France actually invaded Italy in the south.
Italy was on the loosing end after they attacked Greece (until Germany intervened).

The Italians was basically handed their own asses on a regular basis (largely because of nepostistic appointment of high ranking officers if I ahve understood it correctly) so the outcome above is not that strange...

[Panncakemouse]

...
It does seem that the game has made decisions in the Italian OOB designed to cause it to perform historically, and is that really a bad thing? However, by doing it with a messed up OOB, they made it too easy for a player to fix the mistakes and perform much better than history.

In real life, Italy was in a horrible position. It had no natural resources to speak of. It relied almost entirely on trade with the allies for the resources needed to run its industries. It had no money, having wasted much of it developing colonies that added nothing to its economy.
...

I love playing Italy and I fully agree with the two statemets above.

While fixing the OOB is something I think a player must be able to do (the same reasoning is valid for France who has a horrible OOB) the trading might be tweaked a bit. The allies in general and US espeacially (in or out of the allies) are way to prone to trade with Italy no matter what. Italy can go on a rampage in the balkans, Turkey, Spain, Persia... and nothing happens. Italy can join hte axis and ... nothing happens.

The combination of continuous war with IC boost under a long period and the parallell heavy trading makes it way to easy for a human player to create a strong Italy.
I am testing out a few ideas on how to tweak the trade but have not the perfect solution ... yet ... but by using dimninishing trade as agression increases the AI will still be "stupid as today" and the added handicaps will only apply to the human who go ahistoric. This is by the way closely related tho the actual US reactions when Mussolini finally did show his hand.

[mnplastic]

Many of the features you mentioned were added in the expansions. Also, the AI builds partisan cells and you can give them EXP forces AFAIK. Espionage has never been properly implemented or balanced in any of the HOI games.

The vast majority of HOI3 players play SP, not MP. Many believe that the AI improvements should be the primary concern for the devs, since the AI is so important in SP...

Maybe AI builds but I never saw any revolt bigger than 1 division. In theory you can give EXP forces but in practice chances are "impossible". Espionage balance is one thing but espionage in SP can be in practice removed (except for increasing threat which is essential in some games) and game won't change at all. Espionage has meaning only in MP games.

[Darkrenown]

When I watch the AIs fight out a 1936 Italy vs. Yugoslavia, Greece, Austria, and Switzerland war, and this happens:

I have never seen ITA start a war in 1936, nor an alliance that would do that. Are you playing a mod? What version of the game is that? Still, ITA was beaten back by the greeks on their single front after 4 more years of preparation, so it's not terribly surprising they'd lose in a 4 (or 5 is ETH is still going) front war in 1936.

[peterhoi3]

I have never seen ITA start a war in 1936, nor an alliance that would do that. Are you playing a mod? What version of the game is that? Still, ITA was beaten back by the greeks on their single front after 4 more years of preparation, so it's not terribly surprising they'd lose in a 4 (or 5 is ETH is still going) front war in 1936.

Yes, by starting the war so early by breaking the chain of events with noneutrality cheat
you can get very weird results, but they do not mean too much because these countries
have been taken out of the historical development that the game is supposed to follow.
The performance of Italy must be measured by watching what Italy does during the
whole game.

[Flayer92]

This game was arranged by me via noneutrality. I was testing games which involved the majors fighting all their minor neighbors/rivals at once (like Germany vs Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Low Countries, and Denmark, Soviets vs. Poland, Romania, Finland, Turkey, Baltics, and Persia, etc). Italy was the only one to lose so miserably.

The Greeks managed to amphibiously invade Libya, under AI management no less. That is utterly ridiculous.


To be further noted, in the Greco-Italian campaign, the Italians had only eight divisions stationed in Albania against fifteen Greek divisions, and of these only three were sent on the initial offensive. Badoglio projected that 20 divisions would be needed for a successful offensive, but was overruled by Mussolini and given only 12 days' notice before the attack would begin.

The failure was entirely a strategic/logistical one based on totally inadequate planning. A well-led Italy could have achieved much more than it did historically. In-game Italy should not be made a superpower on par with Germany, but it should be capable of exceeding the performance of its historical counterpart, which was far worse than it should have been. Thus, Italy should be capable of succeeding at various endeavors (invading Greece, fighting in North Africa, contesting the Mediterranean, taking southeastern France, invading Malta, etc) in which it failed historically. It shouldn't win all the time or even most of the time, but it should be balanced to have a chance at any of these.

[ScaryT]

It suffered from horrendous leadership, equipment, and from an unethical, amoral, and degenerate coward named Mussolini. An emberrassment to my fellow countrymen, who are nevertheless proud to call themselves Itailian.

Incidentally, I was under the impression that Italian forces suffered from poor morale during the war. Some historical commentators have attributed this (and appalling leadership) as reasons for their defeat. However, I have recently read some articles that say that the fighting moral of the averge Italian soldier was not nearly so bad as some writters have made it out to be. Perhaps there was a wide variation in moral across different Italain units.