How to play Italy?

[Stuka_Hunter]

Greetings

With corona closing in on my home, i decided to do one of the last things on my bucket list and win a game of HOI 4.
*sarcasm off*

I had chosen Italy, even though my 2 games as Germany and 2 games as Yugoslavia were a total mess...

I watched many, MANY tutorials and how-toos on how to do well and stick to historical Italian plans. Actually, it started extremely well. I pushed the Allies out of northern Africa completely in mere weeks and did the same in Somalia. Then I drove one army down the Nile path and wanted to encircle the Allied remains near Khartoum. Bear in mind, at this point I had 4 armies in eastern Africa and proper air support. I was very excited and I couldnt wait to play the game again.

The next day, I loaded up the game, changed some battle plans and noticed that everything got to a complete stalemate quite quickly. The infrastructure near Khartoum was prettymuch nonexistent, my army pushing from the north ran out of steam and Allies had time to regroup. Both sides got supported, me with German troops, Spain and puppet Ethiopian troops and Allies with a quadrillion of colonial troops.

Yet we couldnt do anything. I held strategic positions along rivers and mountains in the south and Allies held Khartoum. Allies repeatedly attacked my lines, but failed. I tried to attack back, but failed. Org was just too low. So on and so forth...

So I thought hey, ill simply send one army to aid the Germans in western Africa! That will surely free up the infrastructure. 70 convoys of troops managed to get unprotected around entire south africa somehow and got into a stalemate there aswell.

Then Allies managed to improve their templates so much that Ethiopian troops couldnt hold the line and I was screwed in late 1940. I simply closed down the game.

I know I made mistakes, like deploying navy wayyy to soon and destroying much of what would later become navy of Vichy France. I also couldnt improve my templates too much later on, even though I had the second best templates at the start of the war (6 motorized with 4 added lights as main tank template + support companies, 10 inf with 2 artillery + support). Thats because I barely could deliver equipment to already deployed units (45 military factories alltogether).

I wont even comment on my navy which, besides diverting attention, did absolutely nothing. 50 tier II subs and upgraded destroyers were a total waste of resources it seems...

My question to you is: if I ever decide to play Italy in HOI 4 again, what are the proper historical timeline strategies? It seems I got very close, but I just couldnt get it right in the long run.

Bear in mind, version of the game is every patch up to and including MTG. So i dont have spies and kebabs (yet?).

Kind regards,
Stuka

 

[brainiac1530]

You ran into the classic, "There's no supply in Africa" problem. It happens to everyone. If the Allies seriously contest you there, you'll have to build infrastructure to raise the supply limits. You won't regain organization while out of supply. It's not entirely just the lack of infrastructure there, it's also partly terrain and some other hidden game mechanics, like "base supply" and supply from victory points (of which there are few in Africa.)

Supply is easily one of the biggest driving forces in this game and determines the outcome of many theaters entirely. Africa, of course, but also Russia. There's more supply in Russia, but not enough for the millions of men that get thrown at it. (In the true late-game, there's not enough supply anywhere due to the incredible pileup of divisions.) It's common for offensives to break down, not due to hitting heavy resistance, but just due to running out of ORG, either due to the "surprise feature" of losing 25% of max ORG when entering an enemy province, or due to the out-of-supply debuff. And the out-of-supply debuff can be shockingly easy to encounter, even in otherwise high-supply areas, when you enter a new strategic area. You won't have any of the VPs, and you don't control it for its infrastructure-based supply, so you only get a fraction of a fraction of what supply was available in the previous strategic area. (There's some kind of choke-point "feature." This gets really nasty in some parts of the world. It's probably a good time to talk about this again, considering BtfB just came out, since this seems to be a huge issue right near the Bosporus, as it were.)

Italy doesn't have a lot of dockyards, so it'll be hard to win a naval competition with the UK directly. It's better to cheese it. One way would be to close off the Mediterranean by taking the Suez Canal and Gibraltar. Then, only their subs can come in, and those can be dealt with using a combination of air superiority, radar, and naval bombers, even if you have no proper ASW vessels. The other way is pure subs. Sub 3s are basically as strong as ever if you set them up for success (proper leader, high command, etc.)

 

[Stuka_Hunter]

Thank you very much for clarification. I anticipated this infrastructure problem, but i seriously underestimated it. I thought Ethiopian war logistics would counter it, but it did nothing of the sort. And infrastructure cannot be built even on provinces which are 90% under my control, which is a bit of an issue near Khartoum. The problem was so severe one third of my best troops pushing from the north had to stay behind.

Ah yes, capturing Gibraltar... that is a bit of an issue. Simply because my tactic for naval invasions never really works properly :/. And I dont want to waste researching marines just for Gibraltar. High fort level also makes it a bit of a slow grindstone.

 

[brainiac1530]

Yeah, it's too bad you can't just bring Spain into the Axis and walk over there.

I doubt you'll have invested in tactical or strategic bombers, so the next-best way to tackle forts is probably the fortress buster trait, if you can find someone with that. It's not especially common. It can be potentially be grinded out, if you know you're going to need it, by attacking over rivers. Ideally, since XP is pretty much based on combat time alone, you'd find a way to attack enemies with very low attack values, with units of your own that had low-to-mediocre attack, to drag it out as much as possible. That might be a good thing for a Spanish volunteer corps to knock out, taking advantage of that "unplanned offensive" debuff (-90% attack!)

 

[Stuka_Hunter]

Hmm ok... I might utilize strat bombers that Italy already has anyway. And I think I actually had the ability to choose that perk already in the game, but I didnt, because the other perk was better and more useful (forgot which one it is). I hope 2 best and 2 mediocre infantry divisions will be ok with a fleetsworth of naval support.

 

[Orbs]

Hmm ok... I might utilize strat bombers that Italy already has anyway. And I think I actually had the ability to choose that perk already in the game, but I didnt, because the other perk was better and more useful (forgot which one it is). I hope 2 best and 2 mediocre infantry divisions will be ok with a fleetsworth of naval support.

Use your fleet to provide invasion support when you naval invade. The ship bombardment provides a small bonus to your troop attack, and every bit helps. If you have CAS use that and air superiority over southern Spain to also provide small bonuses for your troops that are attempting the amphibious landing.

 

[clumsybird]

In order for Italy to win, it needs to play to it's strengths. Primarily it's Navy. Your whole game needs to be centered around your Navy. Naval Supremacy essentially allows you to decide where the major combat happens. If your navy does well, you can keep the fighting in north Africa and Malta and expand into the middle east. If the navy does poorly, you will be fighting in Italy and the Balkans.

The greatest benefit the Axis nations have is getting the first move, you get to decide where the fighting happens. And you want any and all surface engagements to be in a sea zone with air support against an inferior force. Major naval combat is inherently decisive, there are no stalemates. Either you destroy the enemy fleet or you get crushed. You will never beat the Royal Navy on it's own terms. So you need to only engage in select battles that favor your forces and win them decisively. To do this, you need 4 components. Historically, Italy had 2/4 pieces. And was decisively crushed. So better get all four.

1. Enough 'heavy hitting' capital ships to win large engagements. Self explanatory. Historically Italy had about an equal or greater fleet to the UK in the Mediterranean.

2. A faster strikeforce than your enemy. This is key. A fast strikeforce gives you the choice to either intercept or retreat from enemy fleets. You decide if and when the fighting happens (see a theme here?). Around 30 knots is fast for a SP game. You will need to refit some ships for this. You can check on a fleet's speed by hovering your mouse over the name of the fleet, right under the 'spilt selected forces in half' button. Italy did a great job of this during ww2.

3. Air Power. Constant naval bombing and port strikes will keep a fraction of the enemy navy constantly in the dockyard for repairs instead of engaging your forces. Italy did fairly poorly with this and learned the hard way at taranto. You also get some intel on enemy fleets from airpower. Which segways into the most important point.

4. Intelligence. You have to know where the enemy is, and what kind of force they have. The benefits of this are obvious. You can't beat em if you can't find them. Historically Italy did a poor job of this.

I hope this helps! Personally I find Naval combat to be fascinating. Italy really can be a very fun playthrough.

 

[Diakonen]

Mass assault/Mass mob
Guns+fighters. Only.
Release puppets in africa. Dont call them into the war.
When France falls, put everything you got in the channel and do operation Leone Marino.

 

[Stuka_Hunter]

Thank you very much for replies, sadly i am out of my mind mid game. I made it to late 1941 and to be fair I did okay. Mediterranean was completely mine since late 1940 and I was closing the southern African front with almost 0 supply issues.

HOWEVER

British naval supremacy far exceeded my capabilities of improving my navy. Fuel shortages were constant, even though I heavily built and researched the refineries.

The only true naval combat was the one against a small support fleet of a few cruisers and destroyers I managed to trap in the Mediterranean. The only navy I could run constantly were 3 small submarine fleets which blocaded africa with great effect on allied supply lines.

The biggest disaster however weas the German AI. It went Wesserübung even before France fell, splitting troops. That delayed my invasion on Greece and so Bulgaria didnt join the war and stayed neutral. Then German AI delayed invasion on Norway untill they declared Barbarossa, further splitting troops. I had to sent an entire division to take Norway, just to release pressure on the Germans. At the same time, several German tank divisions were "guarding" provinces near Cairo... from who exactly?

Then German AI went nuts on the Soviet frontlines, depleting their equipment and not doing any encirclements. In 3 months not a single province was gained. 2:1 loss ratio in favour of the Soviets says it all.

To add insult to the injury, Japan dragged America into the war and Hungary is declaring war against me. We are in the same faction btw.

Basically I dont want to play a single game as a major nation unless I am playing co-op so AI doesnt screw everything up.

 

[brainiac1530]

The biggest disaster however weas the German AI. It went Wesserübung even before France fell, splitting troops.

I seem to remember that Expert AI had a condition set specifically to prevent this, so this has probably been a known issue for a while. [Edit: I forgot how AI focuses work for a hot minute and said something dumb. Nothing to see here.]