Getting Started With Italy in Hearts of Iron 4
Playing Italy in Hoi4 is mostly about managing two things: your industrial capacity and not getting crushed on the southern front while you figure out what to do. The Blood Alone Italy guide covers a lot of ground, but the core loop is pretty straightforward once you stop trying to fight everyone at once. The guide walks you through the main path, which involves focusing on infrastructure in the south, securing North Africa, and then branching into either a Mediterranean push or consolidating in the Balkans. I followed it last run and it worked decently, though I had to tweak a few things because the guide assumes you're running with a decent amount of game knowledge already. One thing the guide doesn't stress enough is your manpower situation. Italy starts with about 500k manpower and that number crawls. If you're not careful with your division templates early on, you'll run dry before 1942 even if you're just defending. I learned this the hard way during a multiplayer game where I overextended into Greece and then had no units to replace losses when the British counter-landed at Rhodes. What I ended up doing was switching to a lighter division template around 1940 with thinner infantry divisions and more support companies, which cut my manpower consumption by roughly 30 percent. That kept me from hitting the crisis level during the North African campaign.
The production focus is another area where I had to adjust. The guide suggests building a bunch of factories in Southern Italy first, but what actually matters more is securing the French ports after you take over Vichy France. Those ports give you access to the Atlantic, which changes your naval supply lines entirely. Without that, your navy gets bottlenecked in the Mediterranean and you lose supply to your North African forces faster than you'd think. In one playthrough I missed this and spent three months watching my Afrika Korps units starve because I hadn't secured Toulon early enough. After that, I started prioritizing the quick push into France within the first year as part of any axis strategy. The guide also covers the political tree pretty thoroughly. You've got the choice between aligning more closely with Germany or pursuing an independent Mediterranean path. Picking the pro-German route gives you better equipment access but locks you into Germany's timeline, which means you might get dragged into the Eastern Front before you're ready. The independent route lets you take Yugoslavia and Greece on your own schedule but you'll have fewer divisions and weaker equipment early on. I've found the independent path works better if you're playing solo against AI because you can focus entirely on the Mediterranean without worrying about holding the line in Russia. Against human players, the German alignment is usually safer since you get more support from their offensives. One edge case the guide glosses over is the Spanish Civil War timing. If you intervene too early, you burn through equipment and manpower before the main war even starts. If you wait too long, Franco might win on his own and you lose the opportunity to install a friendly regime that gives you access to Moroccan troops and Spanish bases. The sweet spot is intervening around October 1936 with a focused production line for arms and sending volunteers only after you've secured your southern infrastructure. I tried sending in full divisions at the start of the conflict once and it was a disaster — my units got stuck in urban combat in Madrid for months and achieved almost nothing. Switching to volunteer deployments later with a hit-and-run approach toward Barcelona was much more efficient.
For naval gameplay, the guide recommends focusing on light carriers and submarines first, which is sound advice. Italy's navy starts weak and you can't outbuild Germany ship by ship. Submarines let you harass Allied convoys in the Mediterranean and force them to divert resources, while light carriers give you air cover for your transport ships crossing to North Africa. I've found that building about six submarines in 1937 and four light carriers by 1939 does more for your war effort than trying to construct a battleship fleet that the British will just sink anyway. The air force section of the guide is solid but basic. Italy's air doctrine options are limited compared to Germany, so you're mostly choosing between naval aviation and close air support paths. The CAS route works well for the desert campaigns since it keeps your ground troops supplied with air support during advances. Naval aviation is better if you're trying to contest Mediterranean sea lanes. I usually split my focus, building a mixed fleet of fighters and naval bombers rather than committing fully to one doctrine early on. Overall the Blood Alone Italy guide is one of the better resources available for this country. It's not perfect and it skips over some of the trickier decisions, but the core strategies hold up. The biggest value it provides is the timeline breakdown — knowing exactly when to push into France, when to send forces to North Africa, and when to start pressuring the Balkans makes a noticeable difference in how smoothly your early game goes. If you're new to Italy, follow the guide closely through 1938 and then start making your own calls based on what the map actually looks like rather than rigidly sticking to the plan.
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