ITALY INVADES IRELAND

I am also guessing it’s because Northern Ireland didn’t play a role in WWII other than being part of UK as a whole. I am willing to bet they argued that having Northern Ireland as it self would so mean that Wales has to be on its own.

That is indeed the strategy, and it relies on the allies having pretty bad luck to smash up those stacks without losing 50% of your starting planes.

Germany can replace the planes, but not at the same time as it builds mechs, armor stax
Japan has even more planes, but it needs even more than Germany does because without them, its a paper tiger.

The problem with doing these stub attacks is if you lose more than 50% of your starting air power before turn 5, you will not be able to force your victory cities and strategic objectives.  The consequences are felt several turns later (7,8), when you cant smash stax because you lost your mobile strikeforce.

If you want one in that vicinity that is (more or less) safe from Germany, try Norway…

I jest, of course  :-D

Which would’ve helped IRL…

Anyways, I’m going to try to do something different today: G1 Barbarossa. But still I’m taking Bul.

Italy should never have an easy early game.  They can do well in the mid game if Germ went Sealion and captured London.  Italy should never take Gib I1.  It is in UK’s interest to use those french ships as blockers, and the only way to do that is to block the sz off Tunisia with a UK ship.  Now Italy can not go west, and the capture of Gib is the easiest way for Italy to control the Med.

My opponent uses his UK fleet units in the Med to slow Italy and force them to be more methodical.  He completely hems in the Italian fleet, putting 1 blocker in sz’s 94,96,99.  He has even put a CV alone or with 1 ftr to try and force Italy to attack that sz instead.  What this does is give UK 2 turns to mess with Italian NO’s, if they can eek out another turn then USA will join the war and take over the role of squashing the Italians.

On the Mideast NO’s, I think its a horrible idea to have them as allied NO’s.  Considering that in my games 10% of the time Iraq/persia are held by the axis, 10% of the time they are un-captured….80% of the time UK takes Persia UK2, then attacks Iraq UK3 and the Axis never even wander close by.  These ipcs are already UKs, why give them extra per round as an incentive to capture that area?

@Sime:

That?s a pretty interesting strategy for that specific scenario.

Do you think he was aware that Germany could reach his capital before you sent the Italians to America?  In your opinion, was he buying all the talk of you sending the Germans to Egypt?

I think if I was in your position I would have sent the Italians to Africa instead of attacking America, keeping up the illusion that Axis is heading south.  If he didn?t perceive the German threat, he would be sending his units to intercept the Japanese and hopefully leaving his capital lightly defended.

It?s a bit riskier this way because if he sees the threat and stocks his capital, the Italian units are no longer in position to invade America and divert attention away from the Japanese, but it?s just another way of looking at the situation.

Anyway, great write-up, Pelanderfunk. I enjoyed reading it.

No, he definitely saw it coming. Truthfully, the Italians were a bit of a waste in the US – all they really did was give the US a few more targets. On the other hand, maybe the resources he wasted on those targets could have won the war if he used them differently.

My opponent tends to let his emotions leak into his strategy. I knew that if I sent even a tiny Italian fleet over, he would destroy it the first chance he got, even at the expense of a more benefitial move.

Germany takes France or you can call the game on turn 1 because the germans need the extra cash otherwise they are screwed.

Once again an absolute on winning the game turn 1.