ORIGINAL: Froonp
Well, you tell me that "Italy should have her entire original force pool of land units available", but you don't built it (you only have 11 BP for that in 39-40 with your built schedule, unless I made mistakes in my counts), so you can't have 2 units in each factory, and can't ZoC each invasion site. There can't be any MECH, except the setup one, because you only have 11 BP for that. Well, there can be 2 of them, right, but this mean that there is only 1 BP for the whole rest of the 1939 & 1940 years to built. Moreover, if you promise to cross the Urals to the Italian, you'll need every German unit that you can spare, both to push through the Red Army, and to garrison your previous conquests. I don't see how you can both crush the Russian and defend Italy with only Germans units.
All this leads me to say that we do not play the same game.
Of course Italy can be conquered in 1941, if she makes mistakes. I dont like making that kind of mistakes.
Italy starts with about enough units to put 1 in each coastal factory city. So 5-6 more are needed to have 2 in each, 4 of these come from Africa. Another 7-8 are needed to put 1 unit it every dangerous minor port as well as in rome + Milan. The mech may go into sicily, and I tend to build a mech div to be able to call blitz in the north. (The div will typically be built in may/june 41). Graziani often stays in France at this point, but he (along with a German HQ if needed) will rail into Italy if there is an invasion, while the land units already there will help contain the invasion force until it can be blitzed back to sea. (Provided of course, that it doesnt land in a hex that can be easily dislodged.
