Invading France as Italy

[Fulcrum]

I've heard a lot of people saying that invading France early-game as Italy, early game as in declaring war in 36 and winning before the UK joins.
I've tried a naval invasion of Marseille to encircle the French advance, but the opposite happened; my troops were the ones who got encircled. Note that I filled that invasion with cavalry, my fastest available division by the time of the war. I've attempted having a weak line to slow the French down, which worked for a time, until their divisions dug in AGAIN.
Eventually it becomes a stalemate, which buys time for the United Kingdom to join, then Germany joins me, and we all know how that ends up.
Does anyone have advice?

[5-6-5-7-7-7-4-3-4-6-089-9]

Build Paratrooper divisions and airdrop them on Paris. Assign divisions with a front line order on the france-italy border to remove troops from around Paris.

OR

7/2 divisions with CAS and fighters to secure Air Superiority. France is really weak early on and I would argue that Italy starts with the better army.

[Citizen X]

I do this method and here are the tips I can give you.

France does not join the allies until Oct. 1937, so you have until then to defeat them. This gives you the option to, from day 1, build the spy system and run 2 collaboration gov missions, which will do 2 things: 1. It will lower their surrender limit by 22% which is huge, and 2. Gives you up to 75% compliance upon capitulation, which will save you tons of manpower and equipment for garrisons. The second collab mission should finish on June 2nd 1937.

So basically we are going for a strategy of a southern naval invasion, but instead of then pushing East to encircle the French in the Alps, we invade 1 province left of Marseille with Motorized Divisions, and drive as fast as possible to La Rochelle. Use 1 div to drive south across the river to Bordeaux. From La Rochelle, I send 2 divisions up North to capture Brest. Brest and Bordeaux are enough to defeat France with the -22% surrender modifier, however, France will Redeploy all their troops to stop you, so sometimes I send the remaining Divisions in random directions to capture Paris or Vichy or all of the Channel coast. This is my strat; never push in the alps, just hold them. General grind in Lybia for that desert trait. Its all about speed and minimal engagement with the enemy. I usually dont even engage the French navy.

My production from day 1 is 6 infy, 4 support, 2 art, 5 mot, and 2 CAS. I use 9 infy with support art for my Alps defense (along with mountain divisions) and then I use the Cav template to make a 4 mot division, with Recon, logistics.

Defeat Ethiopia within the first 70 days; which is not easy. I dont run any focus and instead rack up PP and use the first 47 to justify on Austria. This will be done on the 15th of September, and just gives you that much more industry and divisions. I annex Ethiopia and do Triumph in Africa for the extra stability, and because the collaboration missions will not be done until June '37 anyways.

For focuses, its then Industry Effort, Claims, Albania. Bulgaria, Italy First, and then France. The focus will finish sometime late June.

Hope this helps. If you want France earlier than Mid '37, i understand. But remember that anytime you annex france with 0% compliance, you are signing up for years and years of painful resistance. 0-75% takes like 6 ingame years or something

[Citizen X]

Originally posted by kyleperry19:

I do this method and here are the tips I can give you.

France does not join the allies until Oct. 1937, so you have until then to defeat them. This gives you the option to, from day 1, build the spy system and run 2 collaboration gov missions, which will do 2 things: 1. It will lower their surrender limit by 22% which is huge, and 2. Gives you up to 75% compliance upon capitulation, which will save you tons of manpower and equipment for garrisons. The second collab mission should finish on June 2nd 1937.

So basically we are going for a strategy of a southern naval invasion, but instead of then pushing East to encircle the French in the Alps, we invade 1 province left of Marseille with Motorized Divisions, and drive as fast as possible to La Rochelle. Use 1 div to drive south across the river to Bordeaux. From La Rochelle, I send 2 divisions up North to capture Brest. Brest and Bordeaux are enough to defeat France with the -22% surrender modifier, however, France will Redeploy all their troops to stop you, so sometimes I send the remaining Divisions in random directions to capture Paris or Vichy or all of the Channel coast. This is my strat; never push in the alps, just hold them. General grind in Lybia for that desert trait. Its all about speed and minimal engagement with the enemy. I usually dont even engage the French navy.

My production from day 1 is 6 infy, 4 support, 2 art, 5 mot, and 2 CAS. I use 9 infy with support art for my Alps defense (along with mountain divisions) and then I use the Cav template to make a 4 mot division, with Recon, logistics.

Defeat Ethiopia within the first 70 days; which is not easy. I dont run any focus and instead rack up PP and use the first 47 to justify on Austria. This will be done on the 15th of September, and just gives you that much more industry and divisions. I annex Ethiopia and do Triumph in Africa for the extra stability, and because the collaboration missions will not be done until June '37 anyways.

For focuses, its then Industry Effort, Claims, Albania. Bulgaria, Italy First, and then France. The focus will finish sometime late June.

Hope this helps. If you want France earlier than Mid '37, i understand. But remember that anytime you annex france with 0% compliance, you are signing up for years and years of painful resistance. 0-75% takes like 6 ingame years or something

If you need more speed, You can general grind Giovanni Messe with Ethiopia, Austria, and Spain to try and get Adaptable and Improvisation Expert. Italy also gets an Army Chief of Staff with +5% div speed.

[Fulcrum]

I only have Death or Dishonor, Together for Victory and Man the Guns.

[TheTDMGamer]

get enough guys to defend piedmont, join axis, do a naval invasion into northern france from germany using lots of cavalry, and rush paris. usually works.

[Fulcrum]

Originally posted by kyleperry19:

I do this method and here are the tips I can give you.

France does not join the allies until Oct. 1937, so you have until then to defeat them. This gives you the option to, from day 1, build the spy system and run 2 collaboration gov missions, which will do 2 things: 1. It will lower their surrender limit by 22% which is huge, and 2. Gives you up to 75% compliance upon capitulation, which will save you tons of manpower and equipment for garrisons. The second collab mission should finish on June 2nd 1937.

So basically we are going for a strategy of a southern naval invasion, but instead of then pushing East to encircle the French in the Alps, we invade 1 province left of Marseille with Motorized Divisions, and drive as fast as possible to La Rochelle. Use 1 div to drive south across the river to Bordeaux. From La Rochelle, I send 2 divisions up North to capture Brest. Brest and Bordeaux are enough to defeat France with the -22% surrender modifier, however, France will Redeploy all their troops to stop you, so sometimes I send the remaining Divisions in random directions to capture Paris or Vichy or all of the Channel coast. This is my strat; never push in the alps, just hold them. General grind in Lybia for that desert trait. Its all about speed and minimal engagement with the enemy. I usually dont even engage the French navy.

My production from day 1 is 6 infy, 4 support, 2 art, 5 mot, and 2 CAS. I use 9 infy with support art for my Alps defense (along with mountain divisions) and then I use the Cav template to make a 4 mot division, with Recon, logistics.

Defeat Ethiopia within the first 70 days; which is not easy. I dont run any focus and instead rack up PP and use the first 47 to justify on Austria. This will be done on the 15th of September, and just gives you that much more industry and divisions. I annex Ethiopia and do Triumph in Africa for the extra stability, and because the collaboration missions will not be done until June '37 anyways.

For focuses, its then Industry Effort, Claims, Albania. Bulgaria, Italy First, and then France. The focus will finish sometime late June.

Hope this helps. If you want France earlier than Mid '37, i understand. But remember that anytime you annex france with 0% compliance, you are signing up for years and years of painful resistance. 0-75% takes like 6 ingame years or something

Thanks for the help, but it seems I'm more or less playing a game of 'how many tiles can my motorized divisions get before they are encircled by infantry.' Any other advice?

[Citizen X]

Originally posted by Fulcrum270:

Originally posted by kyleperry19:

I do this method and here are the tips I can give you.

France does not join the allies until Oct. 1937, so you have until then to defeat them. This gives you the option to, from day 1, build the spy system and run 2 collaboration gov missions, which will do 2 things: 1. It will lower their surrender limit by 22% which is huge, and 2. Gives you up to 75% compliance upon capitulation, which will save you tons of manpower and equipment for garrisons. The second collab mission should finish on June 2nd 1937.

So basically we are going for a strategy of a southern naval invasion, but instead of then pushing East to encircle the French in the Alps, we invade 1 province left of Marseille with Motorized Divisions, and drive as fast as possible to La Rochelle. Use 1 div to drive south across the river to Bordeaux. From La Rochelle, I send 2 divisions up North to capture Brest. Brest and Bordeaux are enough to defeat France with the -22% surrender modifier, however, France will Redeploy all their troops to stop you, so sometimes I send the remaining Divisions in random directions to capture Paris or Vichy or all of the Channel coast. This is my strat; never push in the alps, just hold them. General grind in Lybia for that desert trait. Its all about speed and minimal engagement with the enemy. I usually dont even engage the French navy.

My production from day 1 is 6 infy, 4 support, 2 art, 5 mot, and 2 CAS. I use 9 infy with support art for my Alps defense (along with mountain divisions) and then I use the Cav template to make a 4 mot division, with Recon, logistics.

Defeat Ethiopia within the first 70 days; which is not easy. I dont run any focus and instead rack up PP and use the first 47 to justify on Austria. This will be done on the 15th of September, and just gives you that much more industry and divisions. I annex Ethiopia and do Triumph in Africa for the extra stability, and because the collaboration missions will not be done until June '37 anyways.

For focuses, its then Industry Effort, Claims, Albania. Bulgaria, Italy First, and then France. The focus will finish sometime late June.

Hope this helps. If you want France earlier than Mid '37, i understand. But remember that anytime you annex france with 0% compliance, you are signing up for years and years of painful resistance. 0-75% takes like 6 ingame years or something

Thanks for the help, but it seems I'm more or less playing a game of 'how many tiles can my motorized divisions get before they are encircled by infantry.' Any other advice?

Im sorry you view this in a negative light. Even in real life, the German Invasion of France was a spearhead to Paris as quickly as possible, so that German didnt have to engage the French Army. Germany bypassed the main French defenses and drove straight for the capital, and France surrendered after 6 weeks and 70,000 casualties.

If you are looking for a slug fest where you lose X00,000s of men, then the advice I can give is try actually pushing the Alps and fight tile for tile all the way to Paris

[5-6-5-7-7-7-4-3-4-6-089-9]

Warning Wall of text incoming.

Let's look at the options of attacking France from the Italian Side:
1) Try and get through the large river spanning montpelier and lyon... Yeah that's not happening, believe me I tried, even with 40width infantry... Lost a lot of manpower and equipment... Might get through with Light Tanks but is there enough time to build them...

2) Try a Naval invasion: For this obviously you'll need naval superiority in a region, the easiest being the Mediterranean Sea. Of course, there is no naval base this early on. The closest Naval Base is in Aquitaine so I guess try naval invading that. Personally, I had the most success naval invading Midi Pyrenese near the Spanish border... Of course, my troops were almost immediately encircled, but most of the French troops were tied up at the French-italian border. I immediately fortified the Midi Pyrenese with forts and successfully built a naval base... The rest went well and I went on to capture Paris.

3) Capitulate Switzerland: This looks like the most surefire way of invading France as there is a clear route for a spearhead between the rivers. The problem is additional time and political power is required justifying a war goal. EDIT: obviously additional time is also required to actually win that war.

[mk11]

4) Allow the AI French to empty its stockpiles and new production queue by (1) defending in the Alps (2) repeatedly encircling and eliminating forces on the Tunisian border using cheap cavalry recruited from puppet states.