The Italian Campaign can bring a lot of challenges, especially for the first time playing the scns.
Here are some thoughts and advices which can help you:
- If you play it on General difficulty, there will be probably no problems to make DV's and the Winner path.
- I played on Rommel, this brings a lot more challenge, but it can be done.
- I do not suggest to play on double Rommel (25%) prestige, because I don't know, if I even myself could win it.
(I'm trying right now.)
- I really suggest to read the informations, given in the Library: unit availability, upgrade families, ROF, which trasport should be used for the given unit, etc.
- Reading this source, you have more information to decide, if a given buy, or upgrade is useful, or a waste of hard earned prestige, or maybe later a better non-family upgrade is better for our prestige situation.
- It is also advisable to take a look time to time on the Campaign path images (Campaign history 01, 02, 03). You see there, when a DV is needed for a gift units, or for an extra scn.
- The way of survival is the smart management of our core units. Many times, it is useful to sell several core units, even the gift/extra units (selling: press "D" between the two scenarios screen).
- It is also useful many times to buy some temporally core units in the battle, which can be used with less caution and can get replacement for free before the nexts scn and sold to get prestige.
- AB 40, 41 can be quite useful for this role as they are relative cheap, have a soft attack 3, are very movable and can be used for encircling units for forced surrender.
- Artillery is a major power and a major part of our army as with it, many fights can be done without casualties and also force surrenders are easier to be done. So try to buy a lot of. Later some of them can be upgraded to the potent Semovente 75/18 assault gun.
- Try not to use reinforcements during the battle (except on lower difficulties) - between scns you can reinforce for free, or elite replacement for a lower price as in the battle.
- Last but not least: try to collect as much kills with your core units as possible! With low level stat units, the only hope is to get several lovely extra skill points.
- There is a bug, which I could not iron out: many units have more transport vehicles shown, as intended. Therefore please look at the Transport file in the Library to purchase/use transport vehicles as intended.
Some personal recommendation:
- I sell my reg inf as fast as possible (only 1 motorised inf left until Albania, where I also sell it before the battle). The two - later motorised - Alpini and the gift-Besaglieri inf's are enough as infantry force. Later it can useful to buy a mine clearing unit for temporal action at El-Alamein, but it is not a must - and that's all. Or maybe buying a Bridge Eng, at a given point in the campaign is a possibility, but not sure, if it is really that useful as just another potent fighting unit.
- I use my gift T-26, but all other gift units will be sold. Maybe the Char1b can be used later too, but it is so expensive (500), that every casualty replacement, if not elite, is a great pain.
- I gave always elite replacement to my tanks, fighters and AA. Later, when the prestige level allowed it, I gave elite replacement to units which were near, or over 200 xp.
- I recommend for arty the 105mm version with Lancia transport, but maybe the 65mm mountain arty can be also useful in mountain scns with the move 2 - the only problem that it cost later a lot of prestige to upgrade as in the wast distances of the desert it is not useful with the move 3 pack horses
- As I see, it us useful to buy some AA, because they can weaken the strong Allied fighters and avoid too much own fighter casualties. Even the 20mm AA can be quite useful with 200-300 xp and maybe some extra hero point.
