Having Italy as the 6th player in revised axis and allies

To put it in your terms:

Italy is worse than France.  Why bother?

@Imperious:

France is allready conquered, while Italy is just starting to open her wings… she deserves some token army and identity in the game… One bonus is you can have 3 vs. 3 and put the newb to play Italy (small forces and small responsibility to screw up the game)

sounds like a win/win no?

In that scenario you end with a true historical accuracy… Germany can send 5 divisions to TAKE Italy, or 50 divisions to help them…

I guess I can’t base it on history, as there would be no A&A to play.

I’ve not played revised, don’t even know what the map looks like (although someday I intend to play), but my guess would be that would be a fun addition.  I thought revised was a bit more balanced, but adding Italy could make things crazy for Asia/Africa.  Would you convert some German units, add more British units to Africa, or whatever to keep it balanced?  How about combining Italy and Romania as an axis satellite nation?  Just seems it would be a waste to add a tiny Italy that really goes nowhere fast.

As far as NAs go:  maybe something concerning naval stuff, like cheaper naval units.  Or a bonus for fighting/defending in territories where German troops are.

If you want a 6th player, split the USA. One plays Eisenhower at Europe, the other plays Nimitz at Pacific

Historically give western US 1/3 of it.
For game balance give them 1/2 of course.
Most of the wartime effort went to KGF.

Well the game box for A&A does say its 1942, and at that time Italy was still in the fight.  It wasnt until the following year that Italy dropped themselves from the war because of the allied invasion of sicily, but by that time Germany rushed reinforcements to control all of the Italian peninsula.  I wouldnt mind having Italy playing as a 6th nation in the game, but id need to color a whole set of pieces for someone to play.

Maybe you could make Germany North/East, and Italy/Germany Mediterranean.  Sort of like the splitting the US idea.

How about: no need for an IC to place infantry.  Simply place purchased infantry on any territory that Italy owns.  That could account for the MASSIVE amount of units they had in Africa.

Can’t think of any others, but there should be one concerning the Mediterranean.

no change in placements, however the pieces in “southern Europe”, “Lybia”  and “Balkans” become Italian forces and that means Italy gets 10 IPC per turn. That would not create any play balance issues. Just need some NA’s for them.

splitting up the german forces into either german or italian forces will cause both forces to be weaker than the old unified german force. true, these divided forces get 2 rounds of attacks per turn (1 for the germans and 1 for the italians) but these forces can’t attack together. since the bigger factor at work here is the ability to attack together, dividing the germans into germans or italians will weaken the axis.

to make adding italy work, you’re going to have to add a lot more german units in startup and pray that the 10 fewer ipcs germany will get a turn won’t haunt them down the road.

i think the 10 ipc allocation idea is not necessary. besides, if the allies get to divide 10 ipcs amongst themselves then they will (and should) just give them all to russia.

how about this… give italy 14 ipcs to start (8 for italy, 4 for balkans, 1 for libya, 1 for algeria)
give germany more units to make up for the ones converted to italian and have them start with 36 ipcs (germany now worth 12, eastern europe worth 4, and add a new territory: “low countries” worth 4)

this makes the axis start with 80 ipcs (instead of 70) = 36 for germany + 14 for italy + 30 for japan

I know this is kind of off topic, but what about having China as your sixth player?  or is your goal to have 3 players vs. 3 players?

the map looks like the standard revised map. where are your modifications ? adding italy? it is a nice revised map though, maybe you should ask a moderator to put it in the “downloads” section.