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This is the T55 front lines. I'm moving in two directions on the Germans in the middle. I suspect that they are the remnants of the
Gustav Line and I'm in a massive mop up operation in the middle. The West side is zooming north and the East side is clearing the
road as they zoom north. So far the rail from Anzio is already past Rome and headed North.

ORIGINAL: Petey
Wow, Rome at turn 53.

I'm out of pocket for a few days. Will post a picture when I capture Naples.

Sounds good. I await the posting of your picture kind sir.

Here's the minor war going on in T56 in the middle. I'm slowly gaining the upper hand. It's slow going because of the lack of supply.
I would build a rail to these folks but the war will be over before the rail gets close. I guess we're in no hurry.

Here's the front lines in T57. I'm at the end of my rope on the West side. Not enough units to protect the recon units so I'm staying put
until I can get some more boots on the ground. Five or six turns ago I thought there weren't enough units in the middle and started
moving them there and now it's starting to look absolutely crowded. So I'm going to start sending units to Rome and then NW along the
coast.

Here's how the air war is going in T58. I don't know what happened to the Axis air force. It's retreated to the far north I guess. Either
that or I shot them down and I didn't see enough fur balls for that to have happened. There were about three instances where I caused
an Axis squadron to evaporate from my arty strikes but I'm pretty sure that the Axis has more than just those three squadrons. That's
why it's a mystery. The enemy INT strikes are much less and I hardly ever see any Axis planes listed in the equipment of the attacker
or defender in combat(s).

This is a view from T58 of the epic struggle in the middle. I've finally cut them off from supply and so it's just a matter of time before they
all surrender. Or get killed. There's a giant POW camp in Texas somewhere that will hold all these guys and more.

I have run into only rearguards in the walk to the north on the West side. I'm comfortable running operations there with a skelaton staff
and very few troops too. I really need two more divisions to lurk here as a reserve if I'm going to try something like this. As it is I have
no reserve and that's dangerous.

The front lines in T59:

Here's the T60 front lines. See the difference from last turn? Two of the enemy units moved 1 hex from one picture to the next.

A little off topic but: I tried to load FITE2 just now and got an error message that said I was using
the wrong equipment file even though everything is perfectly right ( file names, etc. ) and to top it off
after you click that message away the program tries to load the scenario and gets into a seeming
loop or something and goes unresponsive. I gave it two full minutes and nothing gives. I had to use
task manager to kill it. Anybody else have something happen like that?

Here's the East side in T61. I'm running into a lot of these rearguards and it's not trivial to run them over.

Here's the West side in T61. There's not much in the way of Germans so far. I keep running into singletons and couples. Never a
gaggle. So far.

Here's the front lines in T62. The mop up operation in the middle is in the stage where there's a lot of troops that are unemployed and
can be sent to the NW to join the crawl to the north up the coast. The biggest hangup is the supply level and the RR engineers can't
work any harder. The rest of this game will probably be boring in comparison w/ what's happened so far because there will be no more
invasions, and no more paratroops dropped anywhere. It's still playable however.

Here's a close up of the action in the middle. As you can see there's only remnants left. I haven't dispatched these guys until now
because I have to "save up" supply for the attack. And it's the weakest attacking unit that everybody is waiting on. Usually every other
second turn is adequate. The units receive about 3 pounds of supply every turn. Or 3 tons of supply. Or 3 points of supply.

Here's the priority rails leading out of Rome. I've got Anzio connected to Rome and then there's three branches and the one leading
to the east is headed to the East side and the one leading NW is following the coastal road and the one going north is going north and
that's all I need from it at this time. I'm not sure if I'll continue that one or not. Let me review the supply levels after about 20 turns have
passed and evaluate the need(s) of the separate rail system again.

Here's the front lines in T63. The lines in the middle are units on the road headed NW. I'm almost done w/ mop up in the middle and
other than that there's only several separate action sites active. Everybody else is headed north. I'm moving the engineers that were
working on the rail on the Taranto to Foggia route to the Rome headed east route to get some supply to the East side more quickly.
The Taranto to Foggia route is a bit further than the one from Rome and besides the one from Rome is the only one that continues
north along the East edge coastal road. It's a no-brainer.

How important is it to clear Sardinia, Corsica and Elba?

I guess Steve would be the guy who knows but my suspescion is that we can ignore those places completely. On the other
hand I've found and killed a Axis units on at least one of those islands ( I don't remember which Sardinia or Corsica ).

ORIGINAL: Petey

How important is it to clear Sardinia, Corsica and Elba?

From the briefing:

Essentially, the Allies win by occupying most of Italy, Brenner Pass, and the islands of Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica at the end of the game.

I don't know how important the islands are, but there are some victory points there. Elba I kind of added in myself, and its not important, just historical. Also, the airbases on the islands come in handy at times.

Here's the T64 front lines. I've got that group that was fighting in the middle streaming to Rome. After a little rest they should be good to
thrust back into the battle. So I guess the rest of this game will be the Allies finding German strongpoints and reducing them as we
crawl northward.