italian surrender conditions ???

[ICED]

is tunis counted as the 3 city rule --its not list in the 3/20/11 ver 2.0 rules ?13. Italian Surrender
Italy always surrenders when Rome
is captured, but Italy can surrender if
a certain number of other cities than
the capital are captured. Currently,
it is set at 3 in the “general.txt” file.
See the line from “general.txt”
below. Also, a list of the Italian cities
is found in the “general.txt” file.
[Right - The U.S. Liberty ship
SS Robert Rowan explodes after
being hit by a German bomber off Gela, Sicily, July 11, 1943]
��������������������������������������������������������
Italian
Surrender
Cities
Rome *
Genoa
Milan
Venice
Florence
Taranto
Naples
Turin
Ancona
Messina
Palermo
* Rome captured alone will force surrender.
* Any 3 other cities will force Italy to surrender.
Ver. 2.00

[rkr1958]

Tunis is an Italian surrender city. It was added to increase the significance of North Africa and create the conditions for a more historical surrender when Palermo and Messina (in addition to Tunis) are captured.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Tunis needs to be Allied controlled to count. Neutral Tunis doesn't count. This was done to make Torch more attractive.

[Celeborn]

So Italy can surrender without a single Allied boot on the Italian, er, boot. How is this historical?

And how is making Tunis a surrender city historical? If the objective is to make North Africa/Torch more appealing there are surely better/historical ways to do it, though I tend to think that the prospect of gaining an invasion base off Sicily is enough (and was certainly enough for Allied planners)

Strongly suggest requiring the Allies take at least one Italian city on the mainland, or perhaps a number of non-city hexes. One might even use a formula along the lines of X (six?) non-city hexes on the Italian mainland controlled by the Allies counts toward fulfilling one city from the three city requirement. 3X would thus cause an Italian surrender without any cities falling. And I think this would also give the Allies even more incentive to roll up North Africa so as to have an airbase from which to stage an invasion.

The current rule is IMO a major historical anomaly and so suggest making a change as soon as possible.

[LOGAN5]

Tunis being a surrender city is a just a bad idea. Imagine Germany rejects Vichy, so you already have Tunis, why not send everything you got down to capture Sicily and you can knock out Italy before the war even really gets started. Not sure how easy this would be but it might be possible.

[PionUrpo]

I believe the reasoning for adding Tunis had much to do with the fact that Italy surrendered ~20 days after the fall of Messina. If allied player executes Husky and takes all of Sicily without having Tunis, slogging to e.g Taranto or Naples will take significantly more time than 1 turn (=20days).

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Read here about how the Italians surrendered:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_h ... .80.931945

Here you will see that the Allied landings in southern Italy were unopposed because the Italians had just surrendered.

With Tunis being a surrender city it means that the Axis player might want to send German units to Tunisia to delay the Allies. They never did that in GS v1.0. Instead they placed many units in Sicily and southern Italy. With all the Italians there it meant the Allies had to fight for a long time until Naples or Taranto fell. That was not historical at all.

With the updated rule it means that the Allies will benefit from doing Torch. With Allied airbases in Tunisia then Italy was under more pressure. Sicily would fall more easily etc.

So the change actually makes the game more historical. More players do Torch now. Before many of the best players ignored Vichy France and went straight for mainland Italy and Sicily.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

The current rule is IMO a major historical anomaly and so suggest making a change as soon as possible.

That is not true. The Italians surrendered soon after the fall of Messina and before the Allies launched the major invasions of southern Italy. Therefore the landings were unopposed. You can't simulate that in GS v2.0 if Tunis wouldn't be a surrender city. We saw in playtesting that the Axis could spawn hordes of Italian garrisons and make it very tough to get progress for the Allies in southern Italy. THAT is certainly not historical.

The Italians wanted out of the war and just waited for an opportunity to do so. Losing Sicily was enough for them to get the "excuse" to get out of the war.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Here you have another reason why Allied control of Tunisia helped speed up the Italian surrender:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of ... rld_War_II

The point is that without taking Tunisia the Allies would not be able to bombard Rome and the Italian morale so early. Airbases on Sicily were established only some time after Husky begun in July.

This is what's being written in wiki about the bombing raids:
On 19 July, an Allied air raid on Rome destroyed both military and collateral civil installations. With these two events, popular support for the war diminished in Italy

[richardsd]

technically, didn't they surrender and change sides!

[LOGAN5]

so what is the deal with the 1944 scenario, Italy doesn't seem to control any of the 3 and they are still in the war?

[Plaid]

Italy is not active in 1944 scenario, since very vanilla game to the current GS version.

[LOGAN5]

You are right. So Italy will Surrender but Germans will still be able to occupy?

[Plaid]

I will tell you even more, when Italy surrenders all their hexes, which not conquered by allies, go straight to germans.
You can even rail troops to mount a fast defencive line.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

When Italy surrendered the Germans responded immediately and occupied Italy. Look here for details:
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php ... d=10005411

[Celeborn]

The Italians wanted out of the war and just waited for an opportunity to do so. Losing Sicily was enough for them to get the "excuse" to get out of the war.

I see now that even though the allied landings took place before the armistice was announced the armistice had been worked out prior to the landings so in essence there were no allied soldiers in Italy before it surrendered.

That said I still don't see a historical justification for making Tunis a surrender city. I am sympathetic to the challenge that would create for the allies getting a third city so why not just take Tunis off the list and lower the city count to two? That way Italy will surrender if Sicily is conquered, ie the historical result.

I'm also not sure how one would take Sicily without air cover from North Africa, ie there already seems plenty of incentive for Torch.

PS. Love the new graphics on the board

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Playtesting GS v1.0 showed that more and more good players ignored Torch because you didn't need North Africa to deal with Italy. Landing in Sardinia and directly to Sicily gave the Allies the airbases they needed.

With Tunis as a surrender city many of these players started to do Torch again.

If you don't want to link this to Tunis you can consider the rule as this:
1. All North African cities controlled by the Allies: 2 Italian cities needed.
2. Some North African cities neutral or Axis controlled: 3 Italian cities needed.

The result is the same. The Allies would be more inclined to do Torch to grab the French North African cities in addition to the Libyan cities if it means they don't need to face hordes of Italians in mainland Italy.

If we generally lower the needed cities to 2 it means the Allied players will ignore North Africa again. Remember that the real Allies didn't know when Italy would surrender and landed in North Africa to have a chance to knock the Axis out of Libya.

GS players know what to do to enforce an Italian surrender and won't waste time in Algeria and Morocco if they can go straight for Italy.

If Tunisia has no meaning to the Italian surrender then the Axis will retreat from Libya to Italy and not to Tunisia. This means French North Africa will become less important than it was.

With the rules in GS v2.0 we see most players doing Torch and some Axis players sending reinforcements to Tunisia when they can do so. That is more historical than it was before.

It's possible to have a different mechanism than counting conquered cities to determine when Italy will surrender, but the rule has to be simple to remember as well. If you link the surrender to Italian losses, Allied bombardment of Italian cities, number of German units in Italy etc. then it can become even more historical, but the players will not easily know what to do to enforce the surrender.

You could end up in a situation where the Allied player has taken North Africa, Sicily and even Taranto and still no surrender. By asking I could analyze the situation and tell he needs 12 more Italian step losses before surrender will happen. I don't think he would appreciate such a reply.

I think rules that players can understand and relate to is better. The rule now is that if you take Sicily and do Torch then the Italians surrender before you land in mainland Italy. If you don't do Torch you need to capture a mainland Italian city. That rule is simple and it rewards those Allied players who do Torch.

[Celeborn]

Playtesting GS v1.0 showed that more and more good players ignored Torch because you didn't need North Africa to deal with Italy. Landing in Sardinia and directly to Sicily gave the Allies the airbases they needed.

Is this a function of Sardinia being truly indefensible or of Axis players exhibiting poor judgment in defending Sardinia (and for that matter Sicily). Would Allied players dismiss Torch if Palermo, Messina and Cagliari were garrisoned by mechanized infantry? Granted one is talking about pulling 150PP worth of units out of service but when you consider the value of an Italy that lasts into 1945 it seems like a pittance.

Very much appreciate the thoughtful and considered discussion here...I know I've learned a few things.

PS. is it just me or do the graphics that now accompany the various levels of board contributor look better than those used in GS 2.0?

[Peter Stauffenberg]

The images you see are from the upcoming game called Panzer Corps.

There are no surrender cities on Sardinia, but the Allies invade there anyway to get airbases. If the Axis fill Sicily with units then the Allies will often bypass Sicily and land in southern Italy instead. That means 10 or so Axis units are out of action because the Allies can block the Sicilian ports.

The point is that the Allies have to land in Italy to grab Rome so they do that regardless of resistance. Vichy France can be ignored because taking it won't necessarily speed up the fall of Italy, well until the change we made.

The Allies are in a hurry so they try to find a way to get to Rome as soon as possible.

[JimR]

The new surrender rules with Tunis now counting as one of the three Italian surrender cities has worked well in games that I've played. Tunisia now becomes a significant theater, as it was in the historical war. In a current game where I play the Allies, the Axis delayed me in Tunisia while filling up Sicily with mostly garrison units. Once Tunis was captured there were no unoccupied Sicilian coastal hexes to invade, and it would have been hard to dislodge a coastal defender via an amphibious assault. So instead I landed in the "toe," established a beachhead, and fought toward Taranto. In the meantime, the Axis player evacuated some units from Sicily to defend the mainland. With a second wave of amphibious invaders I landed in Sicily, eventually forcing an Italian surrender. Since then (it is early 1945 now), the Germans and Western Allies have been involved in a knock-down drag-out fight on the Italian mainland, with the Allies inching toward Rome. The new surrender rules have helped to make these kinds of variations possible, and they nicely mimic some of the conditions that planners had to consider in the historical campaign. So while the new surrender rule adding Tunis may seem arbitrary, in fact it actually helps to make the game feel more historically accurate.