There are not enough Italian Roundels!!!

I tend to leave Greece for Italy and make Germany take Bulgaria and Yugo based on historical value. Now has anyone ever seen UK take Greece if you choose to leave it for Italy? I have never seen this because I am sure UK thinks taking Greece will weaken its position in Med. Any thoughts on this?

Do people see Italy as an Axis minor? I don’t, I know it’s the poorest major power in the game but it’s still a major power. My two cents on this debate is you either take Italy and have it support Germany when it invades USSR or you use Italy as a naval power to keep India and UK from linking up or you can take a more questionable route and try to do both.

Indeed exactly my point!

This seems to be the axis paradigm.
Axis must choose a theatre where they want to win: Russia, London/Atlantic or the Mediterranean/Africa. I guess attacking the neutrals falls in all 3 theatres at the same time, so if the axis want to go for the neutrals they still must decide which 1 of the three above theatres they want to be winning in.

Axis should realize that against good allied opposition they can win in 1 area but expect to loose in the 2 other areas. Perhaps not immediately, but still inevitable.
For example: after a ‘successfull’ Sea Lion, Russia might not be able to immediately take Berlin, but Germany taking Moscow should be out of the question as well. Which is an allied win already if the USA can either liberate London or neutralise  Japan (isolate a must, no need to conquer Tokyo).

Same story in the Pacific.
In short: The axis can win anywhere, but not everywhere (at the same time)!

Alternatively, you can give Canada to ANZAC, replace the Canadian units with ANZAC ones, and play that way.

Gargantua,

This tactic does sound like it can hurt the Russians.  I have been able to sack Moscow as Germany in the games I played but it is very hard and I don’t always succeed.  There have been other games where I died in the Russian Winter.

I don’t think I could use the Italian aircraft against the opponent I play because he is usually pretty adamnent about reducing Italy to next to nothing before he strikes anything else.  On UK1 he sinks half of my Italian fleet.  Which hurts a lot but the main problem is the US fleet he pulls out of the Pacific and sends into the Med along with some subs and transports to end Italy’s war efforts in Africa.  Meanwhile he flys fighters to Hawaii and transports Infantry there.  It would still be possible to take out Hawaii as Japan but would take a lot of resources for very little economic gain.

I have countered by trying to win the game as Japan and I have killed India J3 with the purchase of the Hainan Naval base.  Yet even then by the time I set my sights on the last victory city Italy has been stomped to irrelevant and the US is back in the Pacific.

You may use the tank and the two infantries in Albania with maybe an artillery and/or an infantry from Northern Italy. This way, Italy would have done it’s part of the deal for Barbarossa and appease Hitler’s demands about it.

Saving money can be wise but for Italy, I don’t buy it since Italy is forced into a reaction based plan rather than true offensive since you have to see what UK does to the Italian navy before anything comes into play.

Italy always ends up doing one of three things: 1. Get aggressive and go after Egypt. 2. Can open for Germany. 3. Play defense exclusively to buy time for Germany to get to Moscow.

Anything else I’ve seen usually ends up with Rome going to US.

agreed. Red should be the soviet color. But it not a big deal. I can tell the difference. And since turkey is now completely impassable w/o making a stupid attack, the italians and russians will probably not see action against each other.