Italian surrender

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Here are the proposals. Please vote.

1. Keep as is

2. Add Tripoli as a surrender city and move production from Cagliari to Ancona. All Italian cities with production plus Tripoli and Tunis count as surrender cities. Required number = 4.

3. Change the rule so Italy surrenders if 3 Italian cities are captured (includes Cagliari, Reggio and Tirana), but not counting Tunis or Tripoli.
Losing Tunis will drop max Italian morale by: 10. Losing each of the 3 Libyan cities will drop max italian morale by: 5 each

4. Change the rule so Italy surrenders if 3 Italian cities are captured (includes Cagliari, Reggio and Tirana), but not counting Tunis or Tripoli.
Losing Tunis will drop max Italian morale by: 10. Losing Tripoli will drop max italian morale by: 10

[rkr1958]

I posted this in the other related thread but thought I'd repeat it here in case folks missed it. To me it points to the importance of Libya to the Italians (well at least along the Med coast) and why we should (in my opinion) include all Libyan cities in the morale loss calculation (i.e., option 3).

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Libya

During the era of Fascism many Italians moved to Libya and colonized the coastal areas. In 1940 the Libyan Italians were nearly 110,000, or 12% of the total population of Libya. They were concentrated on the Mediterranean coast around the city of Tripoli (constituting 37% of the city's population) and Benghazi (31% of the city's population) and enjoyed a huge development in architecture. In 1938, the governor Italo Balbo brought 20,000 Italian farmers to colonize Libya, and 26 new villages were founded for them, mainly in Cyrenaica.[15]

The governor Italo Balbo developed the Italian Libya from 1934 to 1940, creating a huge infrastructure (from 4,000 km of roads to 400 km of narrow gauge railways to new industries and to dozen of new agricultural villages)[16]

The Libyan economy nearly "boomed", mainly in the agricultural sector. Even some manufacturing activities were developed, mostly related to the food industry. Building construction increased in a huge way. Furthermore, the Italians made modern medical care available for the first time in Libya and improved sanitary conditions in the towns.

The Italians started numerous and diverse businesses in Tripolitania and Cirenaicia. These included an explosives factory, railway workshops, Fiat Motor works, various food processing plants, electrical engineering workshops, ironworks, water plants, agricultural machinery factories, breweries, distilleries, biscuit factories, a tobacco factory, tanneries, bakeries, lime, brick and cement works, Esparto grass industry, mechanical saw mills, and the Petrolibya Society (Trye 1998). Italian investment in her colony was to take advantage of new colonists and to make it more self-sufficient. (General Staff War Office 1939, 165/b).[17]

By 1939 the Italians had built 400 kilometres (250 mi) of new railroads and 4,000 kilometres (2,500 mi) of new roads. The most important and largest highway project was the Via Balbo, an east-west coastal route connecting Tripoli in western Italian Tripolitania to Tobruk in eastern Italian Cyrenaica. Most of these projects and achievements were completed between 1934 and 1940 when Italo Balbo was governor of Italian Libya, as it became the Fourth Shore.[18]

The last railway development in Libya done by the Italians was the Tripoli-Benghazi line that was started in 1941 and was never completed because of the Italian defeat during World War II.[19]

[Diplomaticus]

Please look at my posting in the 'Sicilian Silliness' thread. I am very much concerned to see us constraining Axis options by forcing a North African defense on them. The above quoted piece certainly justifies the PP's generated by the Libyan cities, but let's not be hasty in assuming that a massive Italian morale drop would result from their loss. The loss of morale, according to my reading of history, was far more concerned with the huge loss of Italian troops.

And while we're at it, if we're going to do this to the Axis, why not similarly penalize other countries for the loss of important regions? (Where does this end?)

[rkr1958]

Please look at my posting in the 'Sicilian Silliness' thread. I am very much concerned to see us constraining Axis options by forcing a North African defense on them. The above quoted piece certainly justifies the PP's generated by the Libyan cities, but let's not be hasty in assuming that a massive Italian morale drop would result from their loss. The loss of morale, according to my reading of history, was far more concerned with the huge loss of Italian troops.

And while we're at it, if we're going to do this to the Axis, why not similarly penalize other countries for the loss of important regions? (Where does this end?)

Well this is kind of a catch 22 isn't. The Italians lost a lot of troops in North Africa because they fought for Libya. However; they can avoid this in GS by not taking a stand and fighting in North Africa. In fact, they can avoid a lot of troop losses by staying in Italy and Sicily and avoiding front line duty in Russia.

Italy took Libya from the Ottoman Empire in 1912. With such an investment of Italian people (i.e., settlers) and resources to build up its infrastructure should simply abandoning it have no real consequences on Italy in GS? I think it should and one mechanism we have in GS for that is morale. From an historical point of view we need to give the axis player some reason to chose to fight in Libya. They're still not forced to but would face some consequence if they chose not to. Is there a better way of doing this?

[gerones]

To see axis player leaving Lybia emptied of italian forces and redeploying them in Sicily was really a gamey way of playing since it was based in the concrete game rule about italian surrender. We need to find a balance between playability and gamey playing. We don´t want rules that excessively limit playability but we also don´t want rules that favours gamey playing. So I have voted 3 option but my only concern is to also include Tirana and Cagliari. May be some allied players could bypass Torch if they can land in Albania and Sardinia and then to get third italian city elsewhere.

[pk867]

I was wondering do we have the OOB for Italy correct in N. A. ?

Maybe we need to adjust the Italian setup? Like have the IT Armor added starting in Libya.

[PionUrpo]

I was wondering do we have the OOB for Italy correct in N. A. ?

Maybe we need to adjust the Italian setup? Like have the IT Armor added starting in Libya.

According to Niehoster OOB majority of Italian armor was in mainland Italy on June 10th 1940.

http://niehorster.orbat.com/019_italy/4 ... my_06.html


In North Africa: 5 full corps of infantry, maybe one more from combining other formations. The Mech Corps is representing the smaller mobile units? I guess they could loosely be such unit, after all, British didn't have full armored corps in Egypt either.

[Diplomaticus]

To see axis player leaving Lybia emptied of italian forces and redeploying them in Sicily was really a gamey way of playing since it was based in the concrete game rule about italian surrender. We need to find a balance between playability and gamey playing. We don´t want rules that excessively limit playability but we also don´t want rules that favours gamey playing. So I have voted 3 option but my only concern is to also include Tirana and Cagliari. May be some allied players could bypass Torch if they can land in Albania and Sardinia and then to get third italian city elsewhere.

I'm also concerned here about play balance. In GS 2.0 the consensus was that the game was imbalanced in favor of the Allies. We've made some important changes to this, but I worry that the change we're discussing makes Italy so vulnerable that the game may once again get out of balance. It strikes me as one-sided, too. Why use this tactic to make life harder for Axis when we don't do anything similar to the Allies? How about a big penalty (a la Third Reich) if the Allies lose Egypt or Gibraltar or Malta? How about changing the rules to make the Americans land in North Africa instead of doing early Overlord/Husky? Is all this really about historical vs. 'gamey', or are we stacking the deck again against the Axis?

[PionUrpo]

I wouldn't be opposed to adding similar morale effects on Suez/Iraq if there's one for Libya...

I think the problem with Libya is the percieved no-brainer status. How many players actually evac Libya in '40 (in most games anyway)? Personally I don't, but I've never really counted the pros/cons either.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Most Axis players run from Libya once Tobruk is overrun. I've seen this in all my games. I never see the Germans send forces to Tunisia once Torch is launched either.

The reason is that it's better for the Axis to just place the units in Sicily and southern Italy and wait for the next step in the Allied plan. It still takes some time to clear up north Africa. Then the Allies end up in 1943 with a Sicilian blob and we can see Italy stay in the war till 1944 and in some cases they surrender later than Germany.

Whether we like it or not the Sicilian blob is a problem.

With the proposed changes the Axis player can actually send GERMAN units to Palermo and Messina to prevent the cities from falling early and thus knock Italy out of the war.

With the change we remove Tunis as a surrender city, but add Cagliari and Reggio so now the Axis actually have a reason to defend Sardinia. The Allies will take Tunis to enforce a morale loss upon the Italians.

So I don't buy that the game balance will be disrupted by the proposed change. You just need to alter your strategy and maybe send some Germans to Sicily in addition to Italians. This is what the real Axis did. Germany even had a panzer unit on Sicily.

I also think people should give credit to those of us who have tweaked GS for several years. We have a pretty good feeling for the consequences of the changes and more often than not we see that the changes have less effect than some feared. This is because players adapt to the changed rules and find other ways attack / defend.

Unless we try we can't see the consequences and since the values are in general.txt then it's easy to change the actual values if the effect became too big.

[ncali]

If you are definitely going to proceed with the maximum morale loss for North Africa, I would suggest you diminish the effects for now. It seems like the group is split as to whether it is a good idea.

Personally, I voted to just increase Italian surrender cities, and include Tripoli. I think that would be enough of a change. I think it's a good idea about being cautious about adding creating new rules for situations. Sometimes a small change is enough.

I particularly like the comments questioning the morale loss proposals. This could (and probably shouldn't) be applied to many other situations involving other countries.

I think the best argument against the morale loss is that the effect on Italy of losing North Africa was substantially exacerbated by the fact that it lost its armies (and a substantial German army) in the process. If it hadn't committed so much, it might not have made such a difference.