How to deal with Africa as Italy?

[Pandrea]

I have never fully understood how to deal with Africa in my Italy games. Conquering Egypt, Suez and all Middle East (plus Arabia) is pretty easy. But what about after that?

The front becomes huge, especially after Persia joins Allies. I am attacked from Caucasus by Ussr, from Persia by Brits, Persians and Indians and from Sudan by entire Commonwealth! And there's always a lonely militia that slowly conquers Libya from the southern desert (it should be unpassable, but whatever...).
My army is strong, I often go with mobility focus and make 9/12 mot and cor as my spearhead. Thanks to them I can easily wipe out Allies from one sector, but Africa and Asia are too huge for total occupation. After any victory I must relocate units into another front where Allies are advancing and it's a perpetual stalemate until my MP goes down or Soviets invade me from Alps after having beat Germans.

Any suggest?

 

[Eugenioso]

First things first, lets clarify something: Africa is worthless. Too many beaches, despicably bad infrastructure and low IC everywhere. The only upside is that it has a somewhat higher-than-average Rare base, and its not worth it. You can safely ignore africa and instead fortifiy the Suez and the beach entrance and focus on the middle east proper. Problem is, as you pointed out, mid east opens up to the russians. This is what you need to do to win:

1.- Forget about africa. Keep a naval presence in the south and fortify your isles/beaches and use your airforce to destroy british ships and convoys.

2.- Send your entire army to deal with the soviets. With your armies combined you can eradicate the soviets, otherwise the germans will lose.

(I compiled a list of games and out of nearly 100 games the germans won exactly once, and that was because the japanese AI kept an army in Kwantung while the germans blitzed)

3.- After the soviets are dealt with you have carte blanche to deal with the british colonies at will.

 

[Altruist]

Conquering Egypt, Suez and all Middle East (plus Arabia) is pretty easy.

So, add South Africa with the Cape of Good Hope and one port midway along the Eastern and Western African coast (most likely you'll do it in the opposite order)... and forget about the rest. Or for the rest, limit your Africa Corps to a minimal token force of 2 TAC, 3 MOT, 6 Inf.

 

[Altruist]

What I forgot...
And use as many amphibious landings as possible, speeds things up by a lot.
If the regions allow for amphibious landings, it is usually much faster sailing along the coast and doing one landing after another than moving via land.

So, I'd also add 3 transporters and 3 marines/mtn with engineer brigade to the Africa Corps and lower MOT to 2.

 

[VTs]

First things first, lets clarify something: Africa is worthless. Too many beaches, despicably bad infrastructure and low IC everywhere. The only upside is that it has a somewhat higher-than-average Rare base, and its not worth it. You can safely ignore africa and instead fortifiy the Suez and the beach entrance and focus on the middle east proper. Problem is, as you pointed out, mid east opens up to the russians. This is what you need to do to win:

1.- Forget about africa. Keep a naval presence in the south and fortify your isles/beaches and use your airforce to destroy british ships and convoys.

2.- Send your entire army to deal with the soviets. With your armies combined you can eradicate the soviets, otherwise the germans will lose.

(I compiled a list of games and out of nearly 100 games the germans won exactly once, and that was because the japanese AI kept an army in Kwantung while the germans blitzed)

3.- After the soviets are dealt with you have carte blanche to deal with the british colonies at will.

This

 

[InfArmMot]

Loosing Africa as Italy, should force a massive disent in Italy. In that way the italien player, or axis player, will have to fight for Africa anyway.

How to deal with this particular fight; using a strategic defense. Ensure any frontal assault will fail. This wil force the British to go around your flank in the south. Let them do so and wait until they are stretched out. Then counterattack and cut them off.

Turn Bengazi and Tobruk into fortresses with a good anti air defense. Produce artillerybrigades for your African infantrydivisions and ensure to have at least 400 medium bombers, with escort fighters in Cyrenaica. Ask Germany for help with at least 1 Panzer and Motorised Division.

 

[Pandrea]

Ok, I have adopted @Eugenioso strategy of leaving Africa to Allies trenching me around Suez channel. Problem: I have no possibilities to help Germany in the Caucasus and thanks God soviets cannot reach me trough neutral Persia !

My army is simply too small for doing anything other than repelling Allies from reconquering Suez, around which they have quite same amount of troops of me and they're growing. I should invading Turkey or Persia to reach Caucasus, but they have around 40 divisions each and they would wreck me if I dow.

It's June 1941 and Barbarossa just started

 

[Altruist]

and thanks God soviets cannot reach me trough neutral Persia !

Hehehe....

 

[Pandrea]

Hehehe....

Lol, I know there's this event and I'm very very worried about it

 

[Altruist]

My army is simply too small for doing anything other than repelling Allies from reconquering Suez, around which they have quite same amount of troops of me and they're growing.

I was in a very similar situation lately with China:

Spoiler: Map: defensive Suez position

I am playing China (yellow), surrounding grey is the Arabian State (allied), to the south the majority of the colonial troops of all Africa are slowly arriving and amassing.

Forget about the tower of units in Alexandria who are waiting to get shipped to invade and conquere French Algeria.

I've found the above the ideal defensive position:
Alexandria-Giza-Cairo-Suez-Port Said.
Distances inbetween are really small, so 2 units in each region are enough and can easily help each other out.
Important tidbit: I make sure to (re)conquere El Faiyum and El Ghardaqah, basically the only 2 regions the French/Britrish can attack to and from. So whenever they move into one of the 2 regions, I kick them out and reconquere the region with a fast unit. Result: in above example El Faiyum has 2.1% infra and every unit there gets a horrible malus on attack due to bad ESE... deathground.

Concerning conquering Africa:

Spoiler: map Africa

Although using around a dozen cav and mot it took me more than 3 month to establsih a west-east-connection between Marocco and Egypt.
The north-south connection will need at least an additional 2 month.
Conquering that lone french victory point in Brazzaville will need at least another 2.5 month (just fastest way, no battles). Perhaps I can speed it a bit up by landing from the sea.

It could turn out that the (Chinese) invasion of France is faster than that. We have definetly beaten the Germans by arriving earlier in Vichy and Brest, Paris being still an open race.

If not for RP-reasons, I'd follow the suggestion to leave Africa alone and to conquere/liberate only strategically needed areas (Suez, Madagascar, Cape of Good Hope, Rabat, Oran, Tunis).

 

[Victor_21]

I've found the above the ideal defensive position:
Alexandria-Giza-Cairo-Suez-Port Said

Technically, you can get away with defending one less province. No need for forces in Suez itself as a border. (data from DH-full, your map may vary)

Because the desert is unpassable in that area ('El Farafra' & 'El Faiyum' borders), you could use a GAR (or two apiece) to defend Alex and Port Said and use mobile forces to defend 'El Ghardaqah' and 'Miniah'. Your opponent can't get three province encirclement bonus if you camp those two provinces. Don't even need to defend against Med landings if you hold Gibraltar too, so just two mobile defenses in that case.

Well there's the Red Sea next door, but I can't imagine the AI conducting that kind of coordinated op

Ofc, you would only seek to minimize the forces holding Suez if you needed them elsewhere. If not... stack away!

but they have around 40 divisions each and they would wreck me if I dow

Not if your game-plan involved cutting off Istanbul/Ankara from those 40-ish armies

Although not entirely sure how much of a merchant marine Turkey has or the positioning of their armies in your game. MTN-ENG with logistic/mountaineer commanders? CAV may also work here too, depending on your tech.

 

[Altruist]

Technically, you can get away with defending one less province. No need for forces in Suez itself as a border.

Absolutely correct.
In this case Alexandria was of great importance as naval base for the Chinese Navy operating in the Med and at Suez my supply and oil from China landed, so I wanted to make sure to have a defended connection between the two regions. I am also building up this provences before transfering them to the formed big Arab State.

Well there's the Red Sea next door, but I can't imagine the AI conducting that kind of coordinated op

True on the one hand. On the other hand, after closing the Suez Canal, there were still many French and British fleets and transports caught in the Indian Ocean in general and seeking refuge even in local ports along the Red Sea.
Often enough, even after having lost every naval base in the greater area, the fleets still remain in the area... until org or str are diminished to a point that their mission-stop-values kick in and they start to retreat not only to the next adjascent region but get a retreat and rebase order right back to the UK or France. This takes sometimes as long, well, I think I closed the Suez Canal sometime between October to December 1939, in April 1940 I've found a British fleet which seems to have retreated to South Africa and after I conquered that, too, my fleets on the way from Cape of Good Hope to Brest (France) are now sailing paralelly to this fleet which is on retreat status all the way (which forbids attacking it).

A very annoying feature/bug I detected, again, units on retreat loose their retreat status. Seems to sometimes happen when you close the game before they reach their retreat target province. So, when you load the game again, they are suddenly no longer on retreat and attacking. With sometimes really bizarre results especially in Africa with the long travel times. Perhaps, if you look very closely, you might notice the small blue unit in the middle of Sudan in my above given map of Africa. It's a French militia which has lost its retreat status several times now. With the result that, right in the middle of all Chinses controlled regions, it swtches to attack. It's hilarious how long it has survived by now and how many times it has been defeated. Since I lack the time to play 3 month straight at the moment (which would be probably around the time it needs to arrive somewhere), I have now detached a TAC to bomb it into oblivion... in addition to 2 MOTs who were, in vain, trying to capture and destroy it.
As long as it happens with 1 unit (in this case it could be the very last unit of the "Allies" in Africa) this is rather funny. Not so much when it happens to 5 units moving to 3 different regions and which were previously carefully defeated with the intention to overrun/destroy them.

 

[Eugenioso]

Ok, I have adopted @Eugenioso strategy of leaving Africa to Allies trenching me around Suez channel. Problem: I have no possibilities to help Germany in the Caucasus and thanks God soviets cannot reach me trough neutral Persia !

My army is simply too small for doing anything other than repelling Allies from reconquering Suez, around which they have quite same amount of troops of me and they're growing. I should invading Turkey or Persia to reach Caucasus, but they have around 40 divisions each and they would wreck me if I dow.

It's June 1941 and Barbarossa just started

Defend the mainland and go breach the soviets on a short part of the frontline, with your combined armies you can easily overwhelm the soviets and force BP.

 

[sarge11]

Once you take suez and for the reinforcements to Africa, how long before the next event occurs that italy actually sends the reinforcements??????