Events on the Italian front

[MagnusOlsson]

I saw Kuniworth's reply on another topic regarding Africa and that it fell the 2nd week. I am in a PBEM game right now, it is october 1942 and nothing has happened on the Italian front whatsoever. I have added a few corps, mainly infantry, to make up for some air formations I removed. If Africa will surrender inevitably, shall I remove all valuable corps or shall I reinforce and hope that they will survive a bit longer? What's the benefit of having an intact Italian front?
Any advice on how to handle that HQ is appreciated!

/Magnus

[RickyB]

Originally posted by MagnusOlsson:
I saw Kuniworth's reply on another topic regarding Africa and that it fell the 2nd week. I am in a PBEM game right now, it is october 1942 and nothing has happened on the Italian front whatsoever. I have added a few corps, mainly infantry, to make up for some air formations I removed. If Africa will surrender inevitably, shall I remove all valuable corps or shall I reinforce and hope that they will survive a bit longer? What's the benefit of having an intact Italian front?
Any advice on how to handle that HQ is appreciated!
/Magnus

In 1943, if the Axis are not pushed back to the mainland Italy, their strength will be reduced to practically ensure an event. You can try to strip the front to save units, but to discourage this action which was common before, it will decrease the time until the next event. Basically, the next event's check begins based on the strength at the prior event, so an empty HQ will lead to a quick check, possibly before you can push units back in. Also, as the first few events in the Italian front are outside mainland Italy, these first few will suffer the strength reduction, so stripping the front now can result in a series of quick events and the possible loss of the game later on because the front got pushed back so quickly earlier. It is all a risk now, whereas before there was basically no risk to stripping either front if you knew an event was coming. Some of the old events were basically hardcoded to occur if they hadn't already during fairly set period, like possibly one month. This has been eliminated, but the strength reductions based on location and date will just about guarantee an event at some point but over a much more variable time period. This means you can slow down the events compared to the fixed ones before by luck, or you can strip the front and risk events happening more quickly.

[ June 20, 2001: Message edited by: RickyB ]