Do you consider Italy a major power?

[Vlad123]

There is also to consider that you HAVE NO MORE TIME TO PREPARE! The UK made a coal embargo and seized the Italian ships present in the UK and the British Empire, BEFORE the DOW. Churchill wanted to force Mussolini to choose: either with the allies (UK coal) or Axis (German coal).
We add that aside, balbo, messe and guillet (perhaps even a 4) were not generals worthy of being such. Regarding the ammunition that did not work, there is a logical explanation: political dissidents (communists, democrats, etc.) were sent to produce weapons and ammunition ... I don't think we need to add more ...

But I want to talk about a rumor, I don't know if it's feasible but it would be an interesting alt history.
Hitler asked Mussolini: "why don't you do everything I did?"
M: I have a king to take into account (and fiat and others ...)
on another occasion Hitler told him bluntly: GET FREE OF THE KING! I'll give you a hand too if you want! What if .... Mussolini accepted? He would have had total control of the country (like H) and forced fiat to immediately produce new things, or oblige it to produce the pzIV (or a P40 derived from pz4) I remember that the pz4 is 36, therefore assuming the coup and in 37/38 Musso has at least 3-2 years to produce real weapons ... But Mussolini often did not have the courage to make this coup. The only coup was the march on Rome ...

 

[DicRoNero]

From a sheer gameplay stance, I simply don't comprehend how you can not recognise someone as a major despite him starting with 50 factories, 50+ mil core pop, and capability to get 5 research slots fairly soon. These are huge assets which (given the lack of any negative spirits) make Italy ahistorically strong and set them well above the rest of the rabble (i.e. minors).

...but their navy was in a whole different ballpark than ANY other minor. In addition to maintaining a fleet competitive with the French (who had only been overtaken as third-strongest world navy in WWI), that fleet combined vastly-more substantial capital ships than could even be built by any of the minor power navies (the only minor power to produce its own dreadnoughts was Spain, which were the smallest dreadnoughts in the world). The navy represented both a huge cost for the Italian military, but also its most public representation (battleships were a far better representation of political power than better rifles or greater proportions of artillery, and Italy went for raw numbers in its ground forces).

There's even a quotation by Mussolini to this effect. Maybe someone can recognize it and provide a source, as over here I'm re-translating it from a book in Russian:

Nothing on Earth happens without the navy. It is the navy which determines nation's rank in peacetime, and in times of war it is the navy to provide freedom of action at sea and resolve land battles outcome to one's favor.

Would be nice to know the origin, as I quite like these words.

 

[Vlad123]

From a sheer gameplay stance, I simply don't comprehend how you can not recognise someone as a major despite him starting with 50 factories, 50+ mil core pop, and capability to get 5 research slots fairly soon. These are huge assets which (given the lack of any negative spirits) make Italy ahistorically strong and set them well above the rest of the rabble (i.e. minors).


There's even a quotation by Mussolini to this effect. Maybe someone can recognize it and provide a source, as over here I'm re-translating it from a book in Russian:


Would be nice to know the origin, as I quite like these words.

Technically it is because the hinghiterra is very strong (the famous thalassocracy) if you have the power by sea, to remove the supplies you have enemies, resources etc ... you have won. The UK has never been strong on land (in fact it has often received ground punches in the head historically)

 

[Shaka of Carthage]

You, uhhh, don't know just how bad Italy was..... do you?

Your validation is based on their performance.

But yes, please explain to me the country that beat a developing ...

Their economy in 1936. Lack of resources.

 

[squid_hills]

Speaking of Italy... am I the only one who thinks Italy might get its focus tree update in the new country pack? I mean, think about it: Barbarossa is most likely the USSR and Finland, with maybe the rest of Scandinavia and possibly Mongolia. But this upcoming country pack has Greece and Bulgaria confirmed, and a coy "neither confirm nor deny" from the devs over Turkey... and I start to wonder. I mean, Italy has focuses that deal directly with Greece and Bulgaria. You have to roll Turkey to form the Roman Empire. The devs seem to be making sure these new trees interact well with each other. Wouldn't now be the best time to make sure Italy's new tree meshes well with the Greek and Bulgarian trees (and the possible Albanian one part of the player base keeps asking about)...?

 

[Ffire]

Speaking of Italy... am I the only one who thinks Italy might get its focus tree update in the new country pack? I mean, think about it: Barbarossa is most likely the USSR and Finland, with maybe the rest of Scandinavia and possibly Mongolia. But this upcoming country pack has Greece and Bulgaria confirmed, and a coy "neither confirm nor deny" from the devs over Turkey... and I start to wonder. I mean, Italy has focuses that deal directly with Greece and Bulgaria. You have to roll Turkey to form the Roman Empire. The devs seem to be making sure these new trees interact well with each other. Wouldn't now be the best time to make sure Italy's new tree meshes well with the Greek and Bulgarian trees (and the possible Albanian one part of the player base keeps asking about)...?

I would be very surprised if there's an albanian tree without an Italian one.

 

[TalyonUngol]

Speaking of Italy... am I the only one who thinks Italy might get its focus tree update in the new country pack? I mean, think about it: Barbarossa is most likely the USSR and Finland, with maybe the rest of Scandinavia and possibly Mongolia. But this upcoming country pack has Greece and Bulgaria confirmed, and a coy "neither confirm nor deny" from the devs over Turkey... and I start to wonder. I mean, Italy has focuses that deal directly with Greece and Bulgaria. You have to roll Turkey to form the Roman Empire. The devs seem to be making sure these new trees interact well with each other. Wouldn't now be the best time to make sure Italy's new tree meshes well with the Greek and Bulgarian trees (and the possible Albanian one part of the player base keeps asking about)...?

I mean, I would be ecstatic if that was the case, but its not. Ive never seen them do something so sneaky. And I would love for them to do that, but htye wont. Its not going to happen sadly.

I would love it but... yea

 

[Akaoni]

Absolutely, but France should and could very easily dwarf Italy, the larger population and resources and land in Europe gives plenty of opportunity to rise above industrially, by quite a bit, over Italy

I'm not so sure. Both armies were 'outdated' and with an old and defensive approach; the navy is basically comparable in the mediterranean context and probably the italian airforce were better than the france one. I was thinking about a 1vs1 war, so Italy can continue to important materials and resources from UK and/or Germany and basically wouldn't have been worried by the British navy. Consider also that from political point of view, France was a powder keg in those years... So, I'm not so sure, but maybe a draw is my favourite result

WWI firearms, WWI guns, outdated tanks and tankettes, ANZAC troops in North Africa complimented the accuracy of Italian artillerymen but noted that their shells rarely exploded due to poor production, outdated air force, except for a couple of exceptions, outside of their navy and the occasional aircraft design, their military was massively ill prepared for the fighting over WWII, they didn't even have dedicated anti-tank guns that they designed and produced themselves, they had to use foreign equipment or their small WWI field guns as improvised. Yes they had some more modern equipment such as the FNAB-43 or the P26/40 but often times these would be rolled out too late or not enough to make a difference. Italy was a agrarian country still, they lacked the capabilities to enter the total war economy that a major needs to win and prove their strength.

Ok, but following this kind of arguments I would say: even France cannot be considered a major!

The main problem Italy had is they weren't ready for war, if I recall the estimate was they wouldn't be until 1947-48.

I think it's too much. 1942 would be enough!

They should be able to beat Yugoslavia but not France. Should be able to beat Greece but not Germany.

Totally agree

 

[Akaoni]

Speaking of Italy... am I the only one who thinks Italy might get its focus tree update in the new country pack? I mean, think about it: Barbarossa is most likely the USSR and Finland, with maybe the rest of Scandinavia and possibly Mongolia. But this upcoming country pack has Greece and Bulgaria confirmed, and a coy "neither confirm nor deny" from the devs over Turkey... and I start to wonder. I mean, Italy has focuses that deal directly with Greece and Bulgaria. You have to roll Turkey to form the Roman Empire. The devs seem to be making sure these new trees interact well with each other. Wouldn't now be the best time to make sure Italy's new tree meshes well with the Greek and Bulgarian trees (and the possible Albanian one part of the player base keeps asking about)...?

I don't think so. Devs wrote that only 3-4 minors will be updated in this pack: so Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey and... Albania? Persia?

 

[Mr.Grizzly]

I'm not so sure. Both armies were 'outdated' and with an old and defensive approach; the navy is basically comparable in the mediterranean context and probably the italian airforce were better than the france one. I was thinking about a 1vs1 war, so Italy can continue to important materials and resources from UK and/or Germany and basically wouldn't have been worried by the British navy. Consider also that from political point of view, France was a powder keg in those years... So, I'm not so sure, but maybe a draw is my favourite result

French army had modern theories in the mix with their old school ones, the main problem is the higher officers refused any new idea, an example would be refusing air support, the overall strategy of just digging in at the Belgian border, infantry tanks. But France, like I mentioned, did also have those younger officers who were eager to experiment and new designs were showing this change, the main problem they had was they didn't build enough because they lowered the budget allocated to military. You can't take a country that is exhausted from the last war still and is trying to maintain a large military but is cutting slack and a different country that is ramping up production as fast as they can, if France was ramping up they could do it much faster and have higher potential then Italy could. While true France wasn't stable, Italy wasn't fantastic either, not to the scale of France but there was a decent opposition to Mussolini and if a 1v1 of France vs Italy happened I could see these groups taking the opportunity to rise up in both, not just France. Italy lasted 2 months after Allied troops landed on Italy's European land. France at least tried to fight and helped their ally Great Britain evacuate, Italy ditched their ally Germany, switched sides and forced the Germans to defend another front. The French lost Paris and gave emergency powers to a commander who wanted to save his country and reduce the destruction so he surrendered early. Italy gave up before the Allies even got to Naples. I'll take the country that won WWI, and had many victories in that war, and countless others in the past, and was, albeit slowly, modernizing it's military over the country that was expecting to fight like 12 battles over a river again, remember the Isonzo.

Ok, but following this kind of arguments I would say: even France cannot be considered a major!

The best tank Italy ever designed was the P26/40 and they didn't even get to use it, and it could be penetrated by a 1936 designed 47mm French anti-tank gun, meaning that tanks such as the D1, D2, B1, 2C, AMC 35 and SOMUA 35, all pre-WWII designed, could defeat the Italians heaviest tank. France had an anti-tank gun, Italy didn't, Fighters they're kind of tied, France was better in the build up but Italy caught up later. The pattern is that France and Italy were tied or France was better. I'm not going to jump into every time of equipment, but it's commonly agreed upon that Italy just wasn't ready and hadn't modernized yet, they're standard aircraft and most produced was a biplane that they introduced to the air force in 1939, Great Britain already had the Spitfire for 1 year by that point.

I think it's too much. 1942 would be enough!

I'm not saying I want it to take that long, just those are what the estimates were for when Italy would've been fully ready. I do think that Italy should be getting with penalties, even in '42, but like I said I would make the focus tree and/or decisions help speed up the process, utilizng the newly acquired population and factories to give a big boost, this would be another incentive for a Italian player to be more aggressive and not just sit around. If they add a path for Italy to fully wait out it should be like '44 and the incentive for waiting out would be at that point you get some bonuses and the idea of not war exhausted country with plenty of manpower, modern equipment, better generals and more is quite scary, even if it is our spaghetti meme bois.

 

[Mr.Grizzly]

Speaking of Italy... am I the only one who thinks Italy might get its focus tree update in the new country pack? I mean, think about it: Barbarossa is most likely the USSR and Finland, with maybe the rest of Scandinavia and possibly Mongolia. But this upcoming country pack has Greece and Bulgaria confirmed, and a coy "neither confirm nor deny" from the devs over Turkey... and I start to wonder. I mean, Italy has focuses that deal directly with Greece and Bulgaria. You have to roll Turkey to form the Roman Empire. The devs seem to be making sure these new trees interact well with each other. Wouldn't now be the best time to make sure Italy's new tree meshes well with the Greek and Bulgarian trees (and the possible Albanian one part of the player base keeps asking about)...?

Italy is not, it's been confirmed, PDX considers them a major and Country Packs will only be for minors, likely we're waiting for Italy to be packed with Austria and Switzerland with a possible Yugoslavia rework (I hope)

 

[DicRoNero]

Japan was far more efficient at building up for a total war, as their fleet had technical equipment of vastly-superior quality (top-of-the-line torpedoes, guns up to 20 inches in caliber, modern carriers and shells that actually had consistent ballistics--we're looking at you, Littorio).

Naval guns of up to 20'? Were those intended for a theoretical Super-Yamato? (Why would they want such ships though is a question of its own).

And also regarding Yamato: I've read the Americans examined its armor plates that they found somewhere post-war, and concluded that despite its sheer thickness, the armor protection was actually not that great due to lower steel quality. Some counter-argue that it might have been the Japaneese scrapping those plates as unfit due to their own QA-check in the first place. Do you know anything on this?

 

[Harin]

Speaking of Italy... am I the only one who thinks Italy might get its focus tree update in the new country pack? I mean, think about it: Barbarossa is most likely the USSR and Finland, with maybe the rest of Scandinavia and possibly Mongolia. But this upcoming country pack has Greece and Bulgaria confirmed, and a coy "neither confirm nor deny" from the devs over Turkey... and I start to wonder. I mean, Italy has focuses that deal directly with Greece and Bulgaria. You have to roll Turkey to form the Roman Empire. The devs seem to be making sure these new trees interact well with each other. Wouldn't now be the best time to make sure Italy's new tree meshes well with the Greek and Bulgarian trees (and the possible Albanian one part of the player base keeps asking about)...?

You are not the only one thinking about it, I did too, after that Podcat post. Still, like other posters have said, Italy is considered a major, so it is unlikely. If they did add Italy, they would probably see the forums explode with approval, though.

 

[Vlad123]

This italian link show can italy have good/fantastic idea, bit much of these not be produced for guility of FIAT(when was say in a post), but the ideas and production exist and certain time are better than german and/or Allies force. If you note a great % of thing are under category too few and/or too late. http://www.warfare.it/storie/as_mussolini.html ps: use google translate

 

[Orbs]

April 5th, 1943. The Roman Empires conquest has ended. It took them a mere 6 months to crush the Americans. All serve the Augustus! ALL HAIL AUGUSTUS MUSSOLINI!View attachment 627926

Just take a look at the glory of all the information here.

600+ nukes.
4.79M manpower left on Extensive conscription.
9.11M fielded currently
2691 factories.

Would love to read a detailed write up on how you did this if you have time
Did you use 40w? What was in the template? Nice job.

 

[Paul.Ketcham]

Sorry for the late reply, I've been busy lately:

Naval guns of up to 20'? Were those intended for a theoretical Super-Yamato? (Why would they want such ships though is a question of its own).

And also regarding Yamato: I've read the Americans examined its armor plates that they found somewhere post-war, and concluded that despite its sheer thickness, the armor protection was actually not that great due to lower steel quality. Some counter-argue that it might have been the Japaneese scrapping those plates as unfit due to their own QA-check in the first place. Do you know anything on this?

The 20-inch guns were for the A-150, which may be called the "Super-Yamato" but actually was scaled down a bit (6x20-inch guns). They didn't really offer any more firepower than 18-inch guns (they were mainly intended to counter whatever designs were developed to counter the Yamato, and did have better armor penetration). They didn't get very far in development (no finished turrets), but they did have several barrels completed, which is more than most nations accomplished with 18-inch guns (only Britain, USA, and Japan).

The Yamatos actually have almost nothing recorded on their statistical capabilities because the Japanese destroyed all of the records; it was a long time before the US even realized they weren't armed with 16-inch guns and closer to 50,000 tons displacement than 70,000 tons. There were problems with Japanese armor quality compared to nations like the UK or US, but realistically the Yamato still boasted a substantial amount compared to most other interwar battleships (in terms of armor quality, the King George V was probably the only one with similar-quality armor strength); the armor was double-layered, which got around some of the production problems for laying down exceptionally thick armor. Specific hull weaknesses also existed, but nonetheless they proved fairly resilient given the ludicrous numbers of bombs and torpedoes they took to sink.

The only ship I heard of being scrapped due to poor armor quality was the Sovetskaya Belorossiya (Sovetskiy Soyuz class), which had disastrous armor problems. That might not be what you're referring to, though.

Edit: Minor and grammar errors.

 

[TalyonUngol]

Would love to read a detailed write up on how you did this if you have time
Did you use 40w? What was in the template? Nice job.

I sure can! So the first thing I want to mention is this. The Roman Empire is infinitely easier on Historical focuses instead of non-historical((The box you tick before your game)). The main reason for this is because it keeps United Kingdom and France as democratic and in the same faction. If the U.K goes facist or non aligned, this becomes harder to world conquest for the main reason that Canada is a prime real restate for your eventual American invasion. However, I did it on nonhistorical and got lucky with UK going democratic. I only play on nonhistorical. Now!

So, from the start. I didn't grind Ethopia. I usually do but I was feeling really lazy and didn't feel like doing it. Plus I wanted to save as much manpower and equipment as I possibly could. So I ended it really quickly. I saved up PP to justify, so I never got war economy early. When I got 190 PP, I justified on Austria and Hungary. There are several ways that you can play as Italy in terms of your early justifications. I hear Greece and Turkey and Romania is a popular one, but I choose differently for one reason. Germany. You require Austria for the Roman Empire and you'll need that precious manpower to fight Germany. So I go for Austria first. I chose Hungary this time around for three reason. It gives me another line of attack into Yugoslavia, it gives me a line of attack into Czech and it gives me attack into Romania. Plus Hungary loves joining the Axis so I removed one of Germanys allies. Before I attacked Austria, I joined germany which made it easier to invade Austria as well as give me some other attack plans for the future. More on that later.

I can't tell you timing of when I went to wars, but I can give you pictures about endings of wars when I can. I have some screens. So, I took Austria and Hungary. This was really early, I say mid to late 1937? I can't be 100% sure on that. I then built up my economy until about 1939... maybe early-mid 1939. I was ready. Albania had denied me sadly but I took on the allies. I had plenty of troops stationed. I had some on Czech, Yugoslavia, France and my Africa. I declared war on Yugoslavia. French border held well but Czech was pushing me back, thoug htye were my colonial troops. They weren't meant to keep them still. It was to delay them. PLus it removes the Czech entrenchment bonuses. Anyways, I declared on Yugoslavia and quickly rushed the ports to keep the French and British out of Yugoslavia. You have to rush those ports or the allies pour in and it gives tough to fight. Yugoslavia fell, I took Cairo and the Suez canal and was holding the French African border. I was pushing up to Turkey and just holding Cairo on the south. I had my navy in the mediterian for the moment.

I then moved my troops from Yugoslavia once I capitulated and moved them into Czech, taking Czech as well. I have not called in Germany. I would then move my troops to the Bulgarian border, justified and declared, taking Bulgaria. I then moved to Greece and Romania, with the bulgarian border gone, Romania was decently quick to take. I took both Greece and Romania with my troops. I was running a bunch of 7-2's. I think 3 7-2's and 3-4 20W infantry? Im not really sur what my templates were back then. Once Greece and Romania fell, i focused on the main Allies. France was still pushing my borders and failing but I had a plan. I pulled back my defensive line further into my territory on a fall back line. The reason I did this was because I was naval invading from behind, which would draw troops away from my border and Germanys border. This naval invasion wasn't meant to take Paris however. I had another plan.

my second attack army moved into Germany, as well as my navy, and naval invaded Netherlands. I had justified, declared and capitulated. I did around the maginot as Italy, taking Belgium, Luxemborg and Paris from there. With most of the troops guarding Germany, My naval invasion and my border, they had no one defending their lines and Paris was a cake wall. France capitulated. I moved all my air craft from the various locations and bombed the crap out of the canal. I naval Invaded Britain and the Allies were defeated.

I did not call Germany in so this is the ending. I owned Canada, india, All of France and UK. So at the end, I had 2.77M manpower once I took them over. Before I won, I had sub 200k manpower so I had regained alot of my power. But I wasn't finished. I then made -all- my troops into 14-4's. 14 infantry and 4 artillery with support companies of my choice. My manpower dropped heavily down to about 100k but that was fine. I only had a few more attacks to make.

turkey and Iraq were next on the list. I took them over.

The next attack was Spain and Portugal, but there was a problem. both of these countries had joined the Soviets. So I had to attack them. Germany and Soviet union split Poland. So, above you can see me attacking the Soviets with sub 100k manpower, but I had taken over Spain and Portugal, so I was ready.

So manpower shot up to 3.19M on just limited conscription. I had lowered my conscription down earlier from extensive that i went to against the Allies. This was to prevent me from gaining well over 12M from forming it. I wanted to save manpower.

Capitulated the Soviets.

And from there on, it was a cake walk. Germany well rather quickly due to overwhelming air force. Then went China/Qing China, Japan, and the rest of these countries.

My last conquest was America. I wanted a challenge so I left them alone till about 1950. I built up a navy, built up my armies and supplies and went to war. I fought against South America at the same tiem I was taking America. I moved to extensive beforehand as I was churning out more armies as I had a wide empire. I also used Nukes liberally. I had 102 nuclear reactors and had plenty of bombs.

America fell in 1952 but I had few more South Americans to take care of. I was not running tanks until I fought America. I just didn't really feel like running it. Tanks aren't neccessary for this game. Just Airforce and infantry.



As for starting research and production. I researched the obvious 3. industry and the research speed, but my fourth one went to the fighter. Production was:

8 to guns, 5 to artillery, 5 to support. I removed the tanks and motorized from the production. I kept the CAS. I was only building Military factories. once researched the plane, I quickly made factories for the fighter and Cas for two each. Without any rubber, I wasn't going to make much so I kept it low and slowly built planes. Focus was mainly on guns and artillery.

So yea, thats how I did it. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

 

[GrounchoVilla]

I think its best to consider Italy a weak major power. It had a great strategic location and a modest population. It was also a poor country, and not a particularly well led one at that, so it was definitely the weakest of the seven major powers fighting in the war (at least before the fall of Paris!). But it was still more powerful and in a better location than either Poland or Romania. Its shortcomings of course are well documented. But a lot of its errors were a result of being beaten strategically and tactically, like the British attack on Taranto which was an innovative tactic that knocked out a lot of the Italian fleet (and inspired Pearl Harbor). Had it not gotten so thoroughly creamed by the British in that battle among others, perhaps they would have been in a better position.

Also they had the bad habit of overextending themselves. Instead of, say, focusing on Egypt or Greece, they tried to fight on both fronts and failed. Mussolini was more ambitious than his country could handle on its own.

 

[Vlad123]

I think its best to consider Italy a weak major power. It had a great strategic location and a modest population. It was also a poor country, and not a particularly well led one at that, so it was definitely the weakest of the seven major powers fighting in the war (at least before the fall of Paris!). But it was still more powerful and in a better location than either Poland or Romania. Its shortcomings of course are well documented. But a lot of its errors were a result of being beaten strategically and tactically, like the British attack on Taranto which was an innovative tactic that knocked out a lot of the Italian fleet (and inspired Pearl Harbor). Had it not gotten so thoroughly creamed by the British in that battle among others, perhaps they would have been in a better position.

Also they had the bad habit of overextending themselves. Instead of, say, focusing on Egypt or Greece, they tried to fight on both fronts and failed. Mussolini was more ambitious than his country could handle on its own.

The problem was that, sometimes the generals did not say, really things as they were to the Duce, they were "men yes" so the Duce had bad information. (a bit like in Manor, where the councilors tell you you are loved by the population, then you find them killing you)