Italy was an unstable country

[Mr. Wiggles]

...but in hoi4 it is a human meatgrinder ready to throw a handful of millions to the enemy.
The country was almost already bankrupted when it entered war due to the efforts in conquering ethiopia and the spanish civil war, the army was obsolete and Mussolini fucked up the country’s division system just to show off more divisions on paper.
Mussolini’s government fell after the Allies took Sicily, because the king and the other fascists knew the war was already lost and the population had enough of pointless defeats.
Why this is not represented in game by proper foci and national ideas?
Take the “triumph in ethiopia” tree for example, the fascists did in fact steamrolled ethiopia in the war, but the aftermath and occupation were far from being a triumph.

 

[SophieX]

Your description is quiet correct.
But it is not easy to build in a total mirror of historical-reality in such a game. Where to start and where to stop ? And afterwards, what about the impact to the game-balance and game-flexibility ?

Don't get me wrong, I will not say, your proposal is "bad" or "useless"; no. But look at the Soviet-focus, I'm sure that there will be good suggestions, how to mirror historical-reality better. And I think, that belongs to other nations too.

The game now partially mirrors historic-reality, the game is quite balanced and it makes fun to play.

No one denies, that there is still room for improvement. The problem is, how to implement this without "ruining" the game itself.

 

[The_Blind_One]

I believe it's a matter of multiplayer balance mostly that without a powerful Italy a Germany player will basically be playing a lost game from day one and it will be impossible to actually win the game when you're that handicapped with such a subpar ally.

 

[Mr. Wiggles]

Your description is quiet correct.
But it is not easy to build in a total mirror of historical-reality in such a game. Where to start and where to stop ? And afterwards, what about the impact to the game-balance and game-flexibility ?

Don't get me wrong, I will not say, your proposal is "bad" or "useless"; no. But look at the Soviet-focus, I'm sure that there will be good suggestions, how to mirror historical-reality better. And I think, that belongs to other nations too.

The game now partially mirrors historic-reality, the game is quite balanced and it makes fun to play.

No one denies, that there is still room for improvement. The problem is, how to implement this without "ruining" the game itself.

I agree with you but I am playing China right now and all the negative national ideas, decisions and scripted events mirror quite good the real problems China had to fight against: the disastrous econonomic and social situation, the japanese threat, the soviet/communist backstabbing...
France and Poland AI have similar negative modifiers and (almost) everyone is happy with that, if you are playing historical you dont want to see Poland and France go toe to toe with the nazis and win.

Right now Italy has the national ideas “the vittoria mutilata” buff and the useless king which gives +5% stability.
Personally, I would actually give Italy small penalties to the army, bigger penalties to the navy and on top of that a debuff to industrial production to simulate the dire situation of the italian heavy industry and state budget.

URRS and Italy reworks are near, I just wanted to point out that historically Italy had only 300k casualties and the country collapsed into chaos at the first sign of enemy invasion. Italy was not ready and most Italians did not want a total war, in no way Mussolini could have thrown millions against the Allies, I think this should be in game.

I acknowledge the fact that balancing a game where Italy collapses and Germany has to occupy Italy and hold another front alone on its own like they did irl wouldnt be an easy task.

 

[Mr. Wiggles]

I believe it's a matter of multiplayer balance mostly that without a powerful Italy a Germany player will basically be playing a lost game from day one and it will be impossible to actually win the game when you're that handicapped with such a subpar ally.

I guess you are right

 

[Dlin369]

Hopefully when Italy is reworked it becomes more like China - one of the weakest majors at best (beset with many problems that calling it a major is a stretch) but with a lot of potential should a player do well/better than history.

I think Italy should play differently from the US, UK, Germany and Soviets in the sense that Italy should be very flexible about which side it takes and when it takes each side. Doing well as Italy should require you to ally with other nations and then ruthlessly change sides when an opportunity appears, with the end goal being creating an Italian sphere of influence

 

[SophieX]

I believe it's a matter of multiplayer balance mostly that without a powerful Italy a Germany player will basically be playing a lost game from day one and it will be impossible to actually win the game when you're that handicapped with such a subpar ally.

You are right.

SP or MP; if you "edit" one nation, you have to "edit" many other nations too; in order find a good balance.


@Mr. Wiggles

Personally, I would actually give Italy small penalties to the army, bigger penalties to the navy and on top of that a debuff to industrial production to simulate the dire situation of the italian heavy industry and state budget.

Do you have concrete ideas about the penalties ? like: army_attack_factor = - 0.2

 

[MobiusTwo]

Don't worry, Italy will get a rework sometime down the line, and it will probably be portrayed in a much more thorough and historically accurate manner than they are now. My guess is that it will be much more difficult than it was before. Most of us have many good ideas on which directions the devs should take with Italy, and what minor countries should get focus trees along with the refurbished Italy.

The only problem is none of us want to wait a year or even two years for this to happen, which given the current pace of development, is probable.

 

[him_15]

Because Italy hasn't had it own DLC yet.

 

[Crispin]

It's somewhat understandable that they need Italy to be better than they where because of balance reasons, but I really hope an eventually dlc won't make them stronger. That's why I like to play late game scenarios in darkest hour or hoi3, you're weak and it feels a lot more realistic. Or even playing from the start you also feel quite the difference between Italy and for example Germany.

 

[Ffire]

Italy economy was crippled by events like ethiopia or SCW, but the player can avoid that.
Another factor was that Mussolini never really managed to organize a military industrial base. All production and factories were quite artisanal with a very bad efficiency.

I think a good and interesting choice a new focus tree should offer is : a long path to fix Italian industry, especially tanks, planes engines, and electronics. Italian navy wasn't so bad, they just had no decent air support, and the lack of fuel leads them to a very conservative use of their navy. They also get quite unlucky with naval battles, and face the best navy of the time.

Side to this path, an political path with internal and external focus should be writen. So the player needs to choose between solving thoses issues and delay war, or entering at war without a ready and efficient army.

They could start with some negative spirit about max efficiency. I don't understand why they've got so much war support, Italians were quite relunctant going to war. Atm you can go with war economy from day 1. Ethiopia should be a bit harder to break without fixing infra first, but that could cripple the AI
I would really like a tank designer at start with something like -10% cost for tanks but -20% to all stats.

 

[Mr. Wiggles]

Hopefully when Italy is reworked it becomes more like China - one of the weakest majors at best (beset with many problems that calling it a major is a stretch) but with a lot of potential should a player do well/better than history.

I think Italy should play differently from the US, UK, Germany and Soviets in the sense that Italy should be very flexible about which side it takes and when it takes each side. Doing well as Italy should require you to ally with other nations and then ruthlessly change sides when an opportunity appears, with the end goal being creating an Italian sphere of influence

It would be somewhat accurate (unlike the german paths), too. Mussolini in fact did not like Hitler and entered war after witnessing the quick german victory against France, but if he would have actually listened to his advisors maybe he would have waited, and italian history would have taken a different path.

 

[Mr. Wiggles]

You are right.

SP or MP; if you "edit" one nation, you have to "edit" many other nations too; in order find a good balance.


@Mr. Wiggles

Do you have concrete ideas about the penalties ? like: army_attack_factor = - 0.2

I have no idea, perhaps I'd give the italian navy a debuff against air attacks to simulate the lack of radar technology.
A debuff to divisions attack and organization.

 

[Vityviktor]

I think there should be some kind of light railroading during wars between major powers, which shouldn't hurt the sandbox nature of the game. They already did something like this with Japan surrendering if they suffer two nuclear attacks.

-In Italy's case, if their enemies take a certain number of Italian core states (like Sicily in real history), this could trigger some kind of event chain which could result in Mussolini being deposed and several different outcomes (the King or another fascist leader assuming leadership, maybe white peace with the Allies, Germany trying to rescue Mussolini and taking Northern Italy as an Axis puppet state, etc).

-In Germany's case, a successful war against the Soviet Union should end with Germany's rule extending to the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line (or maybe even the Urals), Reichskommissariats (and maybe revising what kind of benefits these Reichskommissariats could provide, apart of access to the land's resources) spawning in the area (Caucasus, Moscow, Ostland, Ukraine, etc) instead of annexing the whole land up to Vladivostok, the remaining Soviet Union collapsing or not, the start of a permanent or recurrent border war in the border and heavy partisan activity, etc.

Of course, some of these railroading event chains could go deep in Alternate History, but I don't think this is a problem considering how we can restore centuries old countries and empires, restoring European (and American) monarchies and colonial empires in crazy ways, and all this stuff.

Also, I think the main issue with all this is the current peace treaty system, and how most of the wars end up being total wars and "all or nothing" apocaliptic conflicts. Definitely, there should be more space to allow white peace, and limited victories and defeats with minor (or at least not so radical) political outcomes.

 

[Col.Klink]

Italy economy was crippled by events like ethiopia or SCW, but the player can avoid that.
Another factor was that Mussolini never really managed to organize a military industrial base. All production and factories were quite artisanal with a very bad efficiency.

Correction, Italy's economy was ravaged by this thing called Fascism lol.

But in all seriousness Italy didn't industrialize as well as France and Germany even before the fascists, even before ww1. It's got pretty hard to develop geography for much of it so that's really one of it's core challenges to overcome.

In ww1 Italy heavily depended upon Spanish manufacturing to make up for their lack of industrial base. But well.... In ww2 Spain had just torn itself apart by civil war and found itself ravaged by auturkic fascism..... (it's not like the Communists who were ravaging the country before were any better tho.... Poor Spain....)

These are the real factors, it's not as if the war in Ethiopia made Italian automakers small outfits that couldn't produce enough to motorize the whole army. That was a longstanding issue. Just like the fact that they couldn't produce enough artillery even as replacement for their losses. Just like in ww1 they simply didn't have enough industry and so had to pull stores of any weapon that they could for the effort. Lol, the Bodeo 1889 served until 1960 as a perfect example! They needed ANY gun that would work and that antiquated was there.... So it served heavily in both world wars....

...but in hoi4 it is a human meatgrinder ready to throw a handful of millions to the enemy.
The country was almost already bankrupted when it entered war due to the efforts in conquering ethiopia and the spanish civil war, the army was obsolete and Mussolini fucked up the country’s division system just to show off more divisions on paper.
Mussolini’s government fell after the Allies took Sicily, because the king and the other fascists knew the war was already lost and the population had enough of pointless defeats.
Why this is not represented in game by proper foci and national ideas?
Take the “triumph in ethiopia” tree for example, the fascists did in fact steamrolled ethiopia in the war, but the aftermath and occupation were far from being a triumph.

Well.... The binary divisional system as I understand was designed to create operational mobility and flexibility. Not to "look more impressive on paper." It's just.... Italy didn't have the industry to motorize a large army... and in North Africa Italy tried to use sheer numbers to overwelm the British.... an idiotic move.

Anyway, you bring up a good point. The current surrender process system is inadequate. A lot of people think the Brits would have sued for peace if they lost the fight for Egypt. Too many defeats, too obvious that they were throwing men away. Similar to Italy.... They just kept losing because of seriously poor strategic decisions first and foremost, then secondly lacking the industrial base to really conduct the war with.... So when the allies landed everyone knew that the gig was up. There was no point in continued fighting.

Germany in ww1 sued for peace when it became obvious that victory was utterly impossible and their territory was about to be invaded. In ww2 it behaved the way that it did because of the "stab in the back" theorists in power....

Also btw, it's my understanding that Germany wasn't doing so hot financially in 1939 either. It's revenue was 30 billion reichmarks and it's debts were 40 billion reichmarks, not counting the ww1 reparations debts.

 

[WeissRaben]

The foremost issue, right now, is that history (even in broad strokes) is completely impossible for Italy as of now. There's no civil war, it fights to the death, and it gets to 100% Fascism without any real issues, while there was a civil war coming from the fact the Italians didn't want to even start fighting to the death for the Germans, and there were very powerful anti-fascist currents - and the Fascist Party itself was divided between the semi-Monarchists and the full Fascists.

What happens in-game? Italy gets a very high amount of Fascist support and follows to fight to the death - Naples, Rome, Florence fall without Italy giving up. While in truth Italy had been looking for a way out since 1942, and Mussolini himself had privately reported that Hitler's reaction was the single one reason not to get to the table with the Allies.

 

[sekelsenmat]

Germany in ww1 sued for peace when it became obvious that victory was utterly impossible and their territory was about to be invaded. In ww2 it behaved the way that it did because of the "stab in the back" theorists in power....

False, there is plenty of evidence that the Allies simply did not want any negotiation.

>>>After Roosevelt's summit with Churchill at Casablanca in January 1943, at which the Allies announced their commitment to enforce "unconditional surrender", the German resistance found itself in a quandary. What was the point of killing Hitler, they asked each other, if the Allies would not negotiate with them afterwards? Adam von Trott, a brilliant diplomat who hated Hitler, despaired at the failure of his attempts to talk to the British.<<< source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnists/article-480668/What-HAD-killed-Hitler.html

I also once read a comment from american high-ranking offers that "the Junkers (the plotters) are just as repugnant as Hitler", can't find the source right now, wording might be a little different.

Basically for Germany giving up wouldn't have made any difference in the final result.

Further proof: >>>Roosevelt wrote that "...for though I am not bloodthirsty, I want the Germans to know that this time at least they have definitely lost the war.<<<

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgenthau_Plan

-In Italy's case, if their enemies take a certain number of Italian core states (like Sicily in real history), this could trigger some kind of event chain which could result in Mussolini being deposed and several different outcomes (the King or another fascist leader assuming leadership, maybe white peace with the Allies, Germany trying to rescue Mussolini and taking Northern Italy as an Axis puppet state, etc).

Wouldn't work in game, because the AI makes a pletora of naval invasions and it can't defend coasts. So I regularly see the British capture Rome in 1941, only for the invasion to be crushed in a few months.

I wouldn't want Italy to give up just because the AI scored a Pyrric Victory...

I'm not sure why Mussoline declared on the USA, I have no idea what kind of drug he was taking to do that. But indeed, after the USA joins the war, then yes. Capturing cores in Italy should bring a civil war, but not before. I'm quire sure people in Italy knew that the USA was much more powerful then they.

 

[Ffire]

I'm not sure why Mussoline declared on the USA, I have no idea what kind of drug he was taking to do that. But indeed, after the USA joins the war, then yes. Capturing cores in Italy should bring a civil war, but not before. I'm quire sure people in Italy knew that the USA was much more powerful then they.

For the same reason than Hitler did that : they were de facto already at war with the US since Us industry supported UK war effort. Normally the german declaration should have occur sooner, like when Roosevelt ordered his warships to shoot on sight any german subs. But he didn't want to provoque the US more.
When finally the japanese attacked at Pearl Harbor, they knew that US would fully mobilize asap. Declaring war on them was a move of good will regarding their allies. Hitler especially hoped that the japanese would answer that with a DOW on soviet union.
The fact that US sided the allies is the main strategical factor of ww2, but the formal dow from axis didn't really mattered. That was just formalizing the state of their relation with US to pledge other axis members.

 

[Happy Trigger]

I'm not sure why Mussoline declared on the USA, I have no idea what kind of drug he was taking to do that. But indeed, after the USA joins the war, then yes. Capturing cores in Italy should bring a civil war, but not before. I'm quire sure people in Italy knew that the USA was much more powerful then they.

That would make the game not only pro-Allies, but terrible to play. Would be like throwing 2 nukes on Japan and make them surrender, even though they conquered all Asia.

A player would naval invade Sicily, and trigger a civil war that would divide half Italy, that at the time had 100% war support and more than half stability.

What the game need is a better system of war support and stability. We shouldn't gain war support with ACES, nor permanent gains with focuses. That should be something built under diplomatic and war achievements (capturing war points) during the game.

 

[noobermenschen]

I agree with you but I am playing China right now and all the negative national ideas, decisions and scripted events mirror quite good the real problems China had to fight against: the disastrous econonomic and social situation, the japanese threat, the soviet/communist backstabbing...
France and Poland AI have similar negative modifiers and (almost) everyone is happy with that, if you are playing historical you dont want to see Poland and France go toe to toe with the nazis and win.

Right now Italy has the national ideas “the vittoria mutilata” buff and the useless king which gives +5% stability.
Personally, I would actually give Italy small penalties to the army, bigger penalties to the navy and on top of that a debuff to industrial production to simulate the dire situation of the italian heavy industry and state budget.

URRS and Italy reworks are near, I just wanted to point out that historically Italy had only 300k casualties and the country collapsed into chaos at the first sign of enemy invasion. Italy was not ready and most Italians did not want a total war, in no way Mussolini could have thrown millions against the Allies, I think this should be in game.

I acknowledge the fact that balancing a game where Italy collapses and Germany has to occupy Italy and hold another front alone on its own like they did irl wouldnt be an easy task.

I am planning my first French campaign after my current game, but now you have me looking at Italy...

Given the breadth and depth of Il Duce's capricious incompetence, Italian society did hold together remarkably well, the Government and Crown having the public veneer of unity until Sicily fell. Once it collapsed it came down hard though, and ordinary Italians, especially those serving in the ranks, paid in full for every one of Mussolini's failures.

By the way every time I see your thread title I read it as "Italy was an Unstoppable Country"