Anyone have any tips on fighting in Africa as the UK?

[Angry Soviet]

I started 4 separate games as the UK now. Every time, I ignore Europe completely because France is a lost cause, and I try to immediately knock Italy out of Africa, but they kick my ass every single time (ironically, considering what happened with Italy in WWII).

My current game I finally managed to drive them out of Libya. I started going for Ethiopia, but somehow Germany and Japan managed to reinforce them. They have a huge army, and every time I manage to push in a little into Ethiopia from the North, the combined Axis armies just keep pushing more and more into French Africa. I can't even train more divisions (I have somewhere around 30-40 total) because I'm running out of manpower, and I'm having enough trouble producing enough equipment for my current divisions, which means I can't afford to train new ones. Anyone have any general combat tips? Anything helps.

[Metal Izanagi]

The best advice I can give you is to forget about most of Africa. Almost all of the territory is completely useless. Focus on holding Gibraltar/Morocco, and the Suez Canal. Maybe send a couple of divisions to help South Africa keep ahold of its territory. You don't need any of the other territory. It provides almost no manpower, and literally no resources whatsoever. Southern Libya, most of Egypt, the Sahara, Ethiopia, most of the French and all of the Belgian territory? You can ignore those. It's not worth stretching your forces out holding that garbage-tier territory, when you can just focus on holding the canals.

Once you have a solid hold on Gibraltar and the Suez Canal, THEN you can start expanding out a bit. Even then, only expand until you've linked up Allied territory across North Africa. Don't bother going down into the Sahara, and for the love of all the gods, don't bother with South Africa aside from the territory South Africa itself controls at the start of the game. There's literally no benefit to holding onto most of the colonial territory that the Brits start the game with. It's not worth victory points for either you or the enemy, because it's colonial territory, and garrisoning it is just going to cost you divisions that could be fighting elsewhere, and equipment that you'll lose to desert attrition. Let the Germans, Italians, and Japanese starve themselves in the completely useless Sahara.

Likewise, ignore the western and eastern coasts of Africa. You don't need the ports there to be able to move ships/troops between the Pacific and Mediterranean theaters, and it's just more territory that your enemies will make you waste men defending from naval invasions if you take them.

Oh, and if you need any more reason to avoid all but the northern coast of Africa, consider that most of the continent has almost no infrastructure. Troops take forever to move across the territory, and they'll take a ton of attrition in the process, which will absolutely savage your supplies. Marching across most of Africa involves a few weeks to a month between each province, with your troops taking really nasty desert attrition the entire time.

Once you control the canal and straits, you're going to want to immediately start striking Italy. The Royal Navy and Royal Airforce should outclass the Italians by a mile at that point in the game, so just focus everything you can afford to on crushing Italy. Leave some men behind at Suez and Gibraltar,(If the Axis retakes the northern coast between those places that's fine. You can kick them back out once Italy is gone.) and cut off the Axis's access to the Mediterranean. You'll still have submarines go through and harass you sometimes, but the vast majority of the Axis forces will now be cut off from each other, which should give you plenty of space to finish off first Germany, and then Japan.

TL;DR, the only area you're going to want to hold onto is the stretch of land from Gibraltar along the northern coast up to the two sides of the Suez Canal. Everything else is completely worthless. No resources, and so little manpower that you'll actually lose more holding it than if you just let the Axis waste their men and equipment marching across it.

[Exarch_Alpha]

With ANZAC help (that is - accept their armies and use them) and proper use of naval forces to blow convoys, plus naval strike from Malta, it´s quite easy to remove them from Africa, even if you don´t help France much - which is indeed, what is difficult to do as UK.

You should use a land theorist. It´s more doctrines faster AND army XP for templates.

[Angry Soviet]

Originally posted by Exarch_Alpha:

With ANZAC help (that is - accept their armies and use them) and proper use of naval forces to blow convoys, plus naval strike from Malta, it´s quite easy to remove them from Africa, even if you don´t help France much - which is indeed, what is difficult to do as UK.

You should use a land theorist. It´s more doctrines faster AND army XP for templates.

On that note, how do you use the divisions other countries send? All the Dominion countries (not to mention all of Europe) keep sending me divisions but I can never see anything, besides some scattered inefficient divisions spread out ineffectually over Africa

[Ivshadow]

Stick near the coast Africa will wipe out armies due to lack of supply take Italy's three African ports as quickly as possible rush Tobruk from land and try to take the other two by naval invasion or through the French Africa once you take those ports hold them for awhile and the entire axis army in Africa will starve then send units after them to finish the job
Also don't go over the supply limit in Africa the ai does this and for some reason will sometimes throw their entire armys into Africa.
The best troops for Africa are motorised division also maybe some paratroopers to encircle armys
Another good tactic is to keep the Africa cut of from mainland Italy use naval bomber from Malta and convoy raid to keep him low on supplies and reinforcements

[Traksimuss]

If against AI, you can do 2 good things:

Strategic bombing campaign of Italy proper.
Letting Italy go deeper in desert and cut ports off, using your naval superiority.

In current state of AI, even light tanks are good enough until 1943 or so. Make 2-3 light tank armored divisons and destroy AI easily.

[Exarch_Alpha]

Originally posted by Angry Soviet:

On that note, how do you use the divisions other countries send? All the Dominion countries (not to mention all of Europe) keep sending me divisions but I can never see anything, besides some scattered inefficient divisions spread out ineffectually over Africa

You place them in your own armies. For example if South Africa send troops, you can merge them with the colonial army you probably have near Ethiopia. You can have mixed armies from several countries under, say, Montgomery.

[[e-mail]]

Make 12-24 light tanks divisions with motorized infantry... 10 width is enough. 12 divisions is fine, 24 for overkill. place 12 divisons in egypt on the borders with italy and when war start, wipe him out. If you want to have fun, put another 12 divisons in algeria french territory on the borders with italy, set both oob. When the war is declared the 2 armies will completly destroy italy then you can go down to take ethiopia, i strongly suggest you get logistic companies for your divisions for africa. Also always keep an eye on your supply screen and make sure you stay in the green. If you send too many divisions on the same region that have low infrastructure your divisions will get crushed without killing a single thing. Of course it can be done with less, but as UK ignoring europe you can easily afford to make 12-24 divisions for this task as this is all you'll be doing at the time.

[Bravo]

As above, focus on the Suez (literally - just fortify the four Suez provinces and make sure they have enough ports to keep your troops supplied) and maintain a force in Gibraltar and Casablanca - the moment the Spanish enter the war rush for the other strait point and build forts there as fast as possible.

Italy can literally take the rest of Africa and they're still screwed when the US enter the war as long as you've kept the Suez and Gibraltar open.

[Nyar]

commit half your navy to mediterranean and utterly annihilate that puny regina marina, take Libya and somaliland ports by naval invasion, 2 divisions each should do. station some divisons in british somaliland, take mogadish and that french port, wait a few month and send someone in to clean up the starving italians in libya and somalia. and tada africa is yours! that makes the cape, the only trading route from japan to the west out of reach for all their axis warships, and you can show them some good old british piracy in the cape with just a few submarines without ever fearing any destroyers may disrupt your business