Historical Italy/ Greater Italy Guide/Rundown/Tips (Pre-Nov 2024)

Notes I reference for myself and give to other people/new players who want a rundown on how to play historical Italy. Also included is a link to my youtube video on an unedited playthrough of Italy.

Rundown of my objectives and strategies

Gameplan- kick the british out of the meditternanean, seize french territory and british colonies, eventually form Greater Italy, capitulate the U.K!

General Focus Order:
-Beat Ethiopia before they go into Exile
-Don't take any focus regarding Ethiopia or Colonies except for the +75 PP
-Rush Steel industry in Terni
-Rush 5th Research Slot
-Rush Increase Production
-Rush New Industrialisation Program. To get there faster, make sure you take army primacy and some navy dockyard focus' too.

Figure out the rest from there how you want to play. The objectives are to play historically for the most part and form Greater Italy.

PP picks--> War economy first, then mix of army chief, captain of industry, navy chief,-15% consumer goods guy

War priority- Join war as Germany is just finishing off Belgium. Objectives: Seize Savoy, Corsica, Suez. Bonus objective: seize Tunisia, Algiers if you're slick enough to justify on france and attack them before the UK joins so you can pop off some cheeky naval invasions
Your marines should soley be focused on invading Corsica, To seize Egypt is difficult- make sure you build up the railway, use a logistics wizard field marshall's ability, and hopefully your airforce and shore bombardment will be enough.

Preffered Division template: 9/1 infantry support art and eng only. For Savoy due to mountains, 11/1's. Use the colonial divisions for defence. Tanks too expensive for a Italy also investing heavily into Navy.

I build civs until the end of 1937. At the end of 37, I build Dockyards and Military Factories to a 1:1 ratio. In 1939 as I run out of building slots, I do improve railways and infrastructure in Libya for the attack on Egypt, as well as build extra Radar stations in Sicily and Northern Italy.

I always form the collaboration governments in Croatia and Greece. the Greece collab government won't do anything for awhile, but when you invade greece in 1940 you can turn over all the land to your puppet, and since its their cores you will receive 75% of all of greece's civs and mills!
As for Croatia, by forming them you lose 1 dockyard to your puppet, but they will make it up to you by giving you more civs and military factories. Normally 1 state puppets do not do factory focus' until sometime past 1939 or 1940- since your croatian puppet has 2 states, they usually immediately go for all their factories! One side note though- sometimes when forming Italian Croatia they might choose to do a non-industry focus like army effort. If that happens, load an autosave. I find the best way to prevent them from doing that is to hold off on creating the greek collab when the event pops up, and wait until you can manually form them via decision at the same time. That for some reason usually gurantees Croatia will do the factories.

Airforce: a mix of crappy 1936 fighters, tacs, and 1936 naval bombers. Improve templates once you reach 1940 frames ofc. On war breakout I think I have about 800-1200 fighters, 400-600 tacs, 100 naval bombers. I mentioned above that Tanks are too expensive for a Italy also investing heavily into Navy, so I put all those mills im building that arent on infantry stuff on planes.

Train a ton of Division Colonial's as soon as Ethiopia falls to eventually complete the Mussolini mission. Once its achieved. delete half of your existing colonial divisions. Keep the rest for port guards garrisoning etc

Navy: Finish all ships in production at game start. Once all 4 battleships are done, build 2 more 1936 battleships. All the rest of your naval production after game start ships are done should be into Light cruiser screen killers. Build these until very late 1938. Use the Light Cruiser battery 2 and don't bother with Light Cruiser battery 3 as that costs too much steel.
Research Improved Fire Control and Improved Heavy Battery so you get all 3 at the same time and can immediately begin refitting your 6 battleships to have the better guns and fire control. Taking the 35 day focus that gives a 100% research bonus to Improved Heavy battery 3 is essential (and gives +5% capital ship attack!) Improve the AA as well. If a battleship only has 1 AA module, give them a 2nd. Otherwise make no other modifications to the ships. Once your last 2 battleships finish production don't forget to refit them too.

If you have time refit your Light cruiser screen killers for fire control as well, otherwise just make sure all future new ships have it.

You should justify on France so that you have a wargoal against them by the time the Germans are just reaching the end of Belgium. This will A: ensure you don't otherwise get screwed by the Germans refusing to call you in and B: when you Declare war, U.K and their fleet won't be in immediately, meaning you can get your naval invasions off. Support your marines in taking corsica, otherwise do not use your main fleet until France get's Vichied. Use all your subs across the med to harass allies tho on war start.

With France knocked out, The fleet you've built will usually smash the Royal Navy within 2-6 engagements. You may suffer some bad engagements and lose 2-10 destroyers, but do not despair! Split up your fleets and repair rapidly, all your dockyards should be building destroyers, Light cruisers, and a tiny amount of subs- but So long as you get the +ship repair speed naval spirit, the U.K will eventually foolishly start sending damaged capital ships into battle with you to their doom- that's why keeping your fleet fully repaired is very important

All of your subs should be in the med causing chaos for the allies- not only sinking convoys, but dragging out battles with the allied fleets so your own battlefleet can jump in and gun them down.

So long as you move swiftly, you will win the naval war. The british might attempt some naval invasions but they are predictable- at the beginning of WW2 they usually target either Albania, Northern Africa, or Sardinia. They will not target other Italian cores just yet so you don't have to worry about defending Sicily or anything like that.

Youtube Playthrough

I created an unedited playthrough of my typical historical Italy game as you can see linked here in 2 parts if you're interested in watching a visual guide of every click I make in a historical Italy game, or just want to watch my gameplan executed in video as you read over what I've written.

pt2:

[darksphinx10356]

No idea what you're talking about (trust me bro)

[All talk and no fight]

Italy profile pic checks out

[darksphinx10356]

Very nice.

[All talk and no fight]

[Zandrus]

Thanks, wanted a Greater Italy guide!