Attacking France as Italy

[killerbill0787]

I want to start by saying I have been playing for 3 or 4 days now so i am new to this series. I have been playing as Italy and my plan was to attack France before Germany invaded the USSR and without the support of the Axis. The reason is I didnt want to split up the country and lose out on the factories that I would get for defeating France. My problem though is that I have war on multiple fronts in africa and I cant push past the alps into france. I though I would pull out of Ethiopia but hold a defensive line in Libya. My plan to defeat France was to build forts along the French/Italian border then land a naval invasion behind their line and trap the troops and hit them from both sides crushing their army. I havent been able to get it to work for me yet. Has anyone else tried this or defeated the French as Italy alone? How did you guys do it?

[Against All Anarchy]

Well...i did that a few times on Iron mode.
Difficulty was middle...so no bonus for you or the AI.

Go and declare war as soon as possible..you should start with the War reason thing...(sorry
can´t remember its name) right from the start since it will take around 200 days anyway.
France is realy weak from the start it got no Factorys for war neither a good political stand.
You should get your Forts with your National Focus. Build Infantry and Mountaineers mainly for obvious reasons. Wait the first few days because sometimes the AI will attack you in your Forts. The fight in the mountains will take a couple of months but it will drain everything france got. Since they can´t realy reproduce their army they should´t be able to defend themselv soon.
Rush to Paris wich will lead to their end.
I highly recomment to take just a very few land like Korsika Indochina or Somalia and make France a Puppet.
They will become a very very strong force later on most likly the strongest axis power after Germany-Italy-Japan.

Hope i could help you and forgive my englisch please :3

[Yaldabaoth]

No need for forts or any defense really. Just launch a naval invasion in Southern France and drive up. Doesn't matter if the french army takes over northern italy meanwhile.

[Pippin123]

Also, there's absolutely no reason to fight in Africa, there's no VP there. Bring all your forces back to Europe. Once France capitulates, you'll get all the territories after the peace conference.
For what it's worth, I'd annex everything for the IC value...

Your basic idea is sound : fix the army in the mountains, naval invade Nice/Marseilles, then rush north for the VPs.

You don't have to destroy the French army, just pocket it and take enough VP for a quick capitulation. Try to time your war with some of the nasty French Events like communist strikes etc. France NU can be as low as 20% sometimes, making it very weak...

[killerbill0787]

I want to fight the French army to get the experience. I want to level my armies and generals so that I have a better army if and when i get the chance to land in England.

[The Prophet]

Originally posted by billy.walton87:

I want to start by saying I have been playing for 3 or 4 days now so i am new to this series. I have been playing as Italy and my plan was to attack France before Germany invaded the USSR and without the support of the Axis. The reason is I didnt want to split up the country and lose out on the factories that I would get for defeating France. My problem though is that I have war on multiple fronts in africa and I cant push past the alps into france. I though I would pull out of Ethiopia but hold a defensive line in Libya. My plan to defeat France was to build forts along the French/Italian border then land a naval invasion behind their line and trap the troops and hit them from both sides crushing their army. I havent been able to get it to work for me yet. Has anyone else tried this or defeated the French as Italy alone? How did you guys do it?

take paris before the germans and you get france or at least most of it. Let germany distract most of thier units. Push in thourgh Nice.

[BlackSmoke 🏴‍☠]

For this specific HoI (HoI4), I recommend (for Italy) the following path (after finishing Ethiopia):

1º- Naval invasion on Portugal (as necessary hop to reach UK)(Annexing)
Target: Beja port from Cerdeña
2º- Naval invasion on UK (simultaneosuly naval invasion on Gibraltar to open Mediterranean Sea)(Annexing)
Target: Gloucestershire port from Oporto
Target: Gibraltar port from Beja
3º- Naval invasion on France (Normandy area)(Annexing)
Target: Normandy port from Dover
4º- Invasion Germany(Annexing)

This can be achieved with NO allies for not sharing the revenues. Annexion is higly recommended to get full access to resources and industry.

Necessary:
- You don't need to build navy
- You don't need to build air force
- You only need land troops
- You need the starting Zara class cruisers (due to their higher range). take care of them giving orders of avoiding combat, just patrol. You need them to take Portugal colonies.
- For Portugal to capitulate you need to occupy the entire country plus at least some colonies (Madeira as necessary for next hop to Guinea, then Sao Tome as necessary for next hop and finally Angola)
- For UK to capitulate you need to occupy just the entire country (no colonies) with simultaneously an invasion on Gibraltar to open routes to supplys. 6 troops designated to Gloucestershire and 4 to Gibraltar will be enough. The main army should be prepared to naval transport from Oporto to Gloucestershire after naval invasion.
- From UK the best it's a naval invasion in Normandy
- Taking Germany it's not easy at all. They will have some ally help like Hungary in my case (you will conquer and annex them too). Constant push it's cruzial. Moving fast and occupying as land as possible to negate to them their vital factories.

Advantages of this general strategy:
- You will get the massive industry and resources from UK
- You will dismantle the Allied faction (by defeating their leader faction)
- You will be safe and not to be worried about naval invasions from UK and their allys
- You will get massive lands across the world (UK colonies) that will let to you to be present in any region in the world
- Combined resources and industry from Italy, UK, France and Germany practically gives to you all the advantages to win the game in any desired way.

This all can be achieved by early 1939 (march 39 in my case) or even earlier? Ironman mode, and as said no allys.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=728719635

I forgot it. With this general plan NO WWII will be triggered. Just limited wars that will be finished after your enemies capitulating. Timings are cruzial, DOWs must be done while fighting wars in course. And naval invasions must be prepared before declaring wars.

Puppeting as someone recommend can be useful, but I higlhly prefer to annex major countries, why?

- Puppets can become strong and send a lot of troops, true, but puppet troops are inferior in quality to your current troops. I use hundreds of puppet troops just to secure occupied lands to prevent resistance (revoltrisk) that could mess my production. Annexing major countries gives to you access to massive industry wich leads to rockect your economy and lets to you to set massive production lines to feed your armies. Don't forget to produce weapon systems even not having manpower. Creating a pool of all kind of weapons (air, naval, land) will ensure that your future troops will have enough equipment to fight adequately.

[Lmao Zedong]

Multiple ways you could go about doing this,

1. You could just take them head on and have a year long WW1 style stalemate on the French border which will result in hundreds of thousands of casualties and can be very costly and takes quite a long time.

2. Launch a naval invasion on southern france, close to the mountains in the hopes of encircling their divisions, while attacking through the mountains, the AI will either focus on your landing troops or your mountain troops, this can be quite effective, however since this method requires naval supremacy and I personally think the naval aspect of this game is completely broken this may or may not go well for you.

3. Take over Switzerland and use it as a staging ground for an attack. This method is great because you get a straight shot for Paris with almost nothing in you way (as in forts or mountains etc) However you gotta do this before the democracies are able to guarantee nations. Otherwise this could turn out very badly.

[Hurtman]

... join the axis. 9/10 the French AI will abandon the alpines to go defend the maginot, and you can just blitz through. Be sure to completely redo your tank divisions btw, they're obvious trash at the beginning.