italian war strategy?

[stensson]

I just picked up the game, decided to make Italy my first real campaign as a learning exercise

does somebody have any tips on how to break or bypass the UK navy in the mediterranean so that I can invade malta/gibraltar and transport troops to north africa? in my first game my navy got smashed pretty hard and so all my ambitions of doing anything in the game ended pretty abruptly

[Bo Rearguard]

It's difficult to invade Malta or Gibraltar without substantial German assistance. I've never played Italy by itself so I don't know how much help the AI Germany lends in this situation or if it just goes off and does its own thing in Russia. To equal the British Navy you're eventually going to need to research Naval Weaponry and Naval Warfare. The British have these techs at start and the Italians don't which puts them at a disadvantage at sea. As the Italians you sort of have to play "keep-away" with the British Navy to some extent at the start of the game, only attacking if they show up in your neighborhood and retreating to port if you can after attacking. Plus, you have the disadvantage of needing to build a lot of naval units up to full strength at the start of the game.

[B1GB0M]

I'm also a fairly new player, so I would defer to more experienced players and take this advice with a grain of salt.

I also started out playing only Italy to learn the basic mechanics and what worked for me was sending two HQ, the tank division on the French border, and two armies down to Libya before Italy joins the war. I also sent the tactical bombers (med. bombers?) and fighter group to Libya. Once the war starts, I rush down the rail-line on the North African coast, while staggering the two HQs in cities/towns to keep supply up. I'm usually able to reach El-Alamein and hold the position until the DAK arrives in early '41. Now, sometimes the German AI will not be the best at helping with the DAK, but in a when controlling the whole Axis I'm able to use the combined German and Italian forces to push the UK out of Egypt relatively easily.

I'm fairly certain this would be very punished in MP, but I'm only interested in SP and it works fine for me there.

I like investing in Industry first (as its only 125 for Italy), then Armored Warfare to give your tank division the second "bonus" attack which helps a lot in NA.

I usually hide the Italian fleet in the Adriatic until I can get a significant amount of naval research done later in the game; the starting UK navy is better than yours in an open fight. I think it's almost impossible to take Malta (never tried Gibraltar, but I imagine it's similar) without most of the German Luftwaffe providing support, but I never found the supply de-buff to be worth the trouble of invading it.