Gaming the fall of Italy

[alexvand]

So here's the situation:

The Italian surface fleet is essentially gone. (Maybe a couple of cruisers left.)
The NAVs created by Italy and Germany have been shot down and the allies FTRs can overwhelm anything you have left.
The Allies have Malta and Sardinia, maybe even have landed in Sicily.

Italy will fall.

How do you manage it?

Do you send every single Italian unit into Italy to try and keep the garrison ratio high? or do you send every single Italian unit out to have them survive the fall, but have the fall happen sooner?

You are going to send German units. Do you park them in the North and establish a safe and secure defensive line but allow Italy to fall sooner? or do you send them further into Italy in order to lead attempts to push the Allies off the beach and keep Italian units out of ZOC so the garrison ratios stays high but then risk they get cut off in the inevitable collapse?

How do you do it?

[davidachamberlain]

ORIGINAL: alexvand

So here's the situation:

The Italian surface fleet is essentially gone. (Maybe a couple of cruisers left.)
The NAVs created by Italy and Germany have been shot down and the allies FTRs can overwhelm anything you have left.
The Allies have Malta and Sardinia, maybe even have landed in Sicily.

Italy will fall.

How do you manage it?

Do you send every single Italian unit into Italy to try and keep the garrison ratio high? or do you send every single Italian unit out to have them survive the fall, but have the fall happen sooner?

You are going to send German units. Do you park them in the North and establish a safe and secure defensive line but allow Italy to fall sooner? or do you send them further into Italy in order to lead attempts to push the Allies off the beach and keep Italian units out of ZOC so the garrison ratios stays high but then risk they get cut off in the inevitable collapse?

How do you do it?

First of all you need to realize that this is not just Italy's problem. It is also a serious problem for Germany. Usually, before things get misearable in Italy, I have a BUNCH of German units on every important hex and establish units every 3 shore hexes to make invasions more difficult and set them up for a VERY SLOW pullback. There really are not enough Italian units to defend, but Germany should have units to spare until they need to start falling back from the German and French fronts. Regardless, they will need to hold the Alps.

The best units to put there are mostly the cheap and easy to replace units like the Militia (easy rebuild back in Germany) and Garrisons. A HQ and a few Armour and Mechanized Inf will help a lot as well.

You use the mountains all the way down including Sicily. You make the Allies fight for every hex as long as possible. It takes units out of the battle for France and could delay things enough to prevent Germany from being conquered.

Dave

[Joseignacio]

IIRW Italian units in Italy disappear with the conquer, while the ones outside Italy don't, so you should get almost all the Italians to garrison France or other areas and bring GE militia and GARR to slow the allies, with a couple of Mech or ARM to strenghthen clear areas.

Preventing the fall of Italy from the Beginning may include letting the IT conquer another country - Yugoslavia? to make it a new home country... There is always Albania but I am not sure if it fulfills the ruling (I always get lost with this bureaucratic rules) and it's too easy to take.

Edit, I just saw David mentioned exactly the same composition. I will add something else, then. When all the hexes are equally difficult to invade, the allies tend to invade in the north. I suffered an simultaneous invasion in Genoa area and Venice, and all the GE units below that I had already disposed were suddenly OOS.

So I would advise to increase the strength in the north, so to make it more attractive to invade in the Napoles area or below and have to make all the way up. Even with crappy units. He may not fall for it buy then anyway he will have to fight the stronger unit in the north and no valuable units will be OOS. Of course with this system the crappiest go to to Sicily.

[Dabrion]

Can you tell us the a little more about the general situation? What turn are you playing currently? Where else are the Wallies invested, only in the Med? How does Russia look? Does the Axis maintain any other theatres besides Russia and Italy? Is Vichy intact? How much lift do the Wallies have available for Italy (can they ship in faster that you can rail in?)?

Perspectively you should make sure to hold the mountain range from La Specia, Florence to Ancona with quality German units and swamp all hexes north of that with cheap German units. That will conserve the Italian industry for the Axis cause. The choke 2hex south-east of Rome can be a first line of defense (historical line). Everything further south is a trap in my opinion and not quality units should be railed there. If the Allies haven't landed yet, you should make it as hard as possible, by zocing every single hex with the cheapest units you can find and double stacks in the cities (one 6+ factor garrison/infantry + another cheap unit for Taranto and Naples). It takes some time to rail out the Italians..

Be aware that you will loose supply from Italian cities upon conquest.

[AlbertN]

In general is:

Rail / Move out Italians.
Send in German forces.
Kamikaze your last Italian ships - you may luck a 1 to 10 search roll or so, and just pump damage all that you can with your 1 per time cruiser in action.

That assuming the Allies landed already.
If they've not landed you should be ready to throw them back in the sea on the spot as viable alternative but not always doable (lots depends on which rules are you playing with).

Sure timing is also a thing. If you risk Italy already in '42 (Which the Allies can easily do if the Axis has not closed the med) then you're in a deep pit of excrements to not use other words.