Slitherine

After getting slaughtered on the southern beaches my first go around, I tried attacking Naples directly and found an easy way to get a bloodless minor victory.

After using ~5 turns positioning my forces, I landed the bulk of my forces west of Naples with airborne landing simultaneously to the north/east. The city fell in a few turns, leaving me plenty of time to leisurely secure the two river crossing objectives to the north. I braced myself for an armored counterattack, but it never arrived.

The last few turns, I had my air forces do some flybys of the intended landing zones and found the entire axis force swarming around aimlessly. I feel that capturing Naples should trigger the AI to launch some kind of counterattack.

Overall, I think I encountered less than 10 enemy units in the north (the majority of them at Naples) and took almost no damage.

Since the general AI is weak, most fun scenarios rely heavily on scripting.

However, if you take another path than the one(s) intended and predicted by the scenario designer, yes, you can short-circuit the enemy.

This is because lots of units are not really under the control of the general AI, but have been given individual orders, or orders to attack only when certain zones are occupied by the attacker (=you). In other words, if you never go where the scenario expects you to, those units will wait for your arrival forever. They cannot be utilized by the AI in a counter-attack. (In any scenario where the AI plays as the defender, most units are set to "Defense" and wouldn't make a counterattack anyway).

I think you should be glad and proud you out-played not only the AI but the designer too Now, for more fun and more challenge, how about you replaying the scenario and this time make your landings where the Axis expects you to...?

Found Salerno surprisingly easy, played the scenario pretty much the way it actually happened way back when Had some airborne boys doing a hell of a job holding the mountain chokepoints and the fleet doing its job suppressing the Panzers (wish we could have a Naval core force) Did you have any SE units in your core? i find that they really help tip the balance in your favor.

I think it's a credit to the great level design (or my own incompetence) that this was the first time I managed to fool the AI in a significant way. Maybe I've been spoiled by the major improvements in scripting since the original campaign.

Looking back, I had overextended both my core and my cortex securing a triumph in Sicily. I'll take another swing at it on my next campaign.