So I just tried my hand playing as Italy with the intention of pursuing the Reformist Scorza Path, and for the second time I ended up wrapping up a playthrough early, this time in frustration; earlier I had attempted to play as Liberal Japan, but the investigation at the beginning gradually wore away my interest, combined with an inability to meaningfully intervene in any of the wars within the Sphere and me not being sure how to best manage Naval Production.
Note: To be clear from the start, I'm sure most of the below is already known by the Devs and on the list to be fixed; this particular account is colored, again, by my frustration due to a combination of bad luck and unintentional road blocks.
Unfortunately there are simply too many bugs when it comes to a number of interactions or events for Italy, the most notable being the Italian Diplomacy GUI; as a significant part of any Italian Strategy is getting the Balkans and France into your sphere of influence so you can get access to resources and extra factories, the inability to actually do this meant that normally I'd have little reason to invest during the Great Game(s). You can get around this by editing the save file, but there are a number of different variables that go into specifying the client-state level that must be kept track of.
The Greeks rebelled, but I spent a good year or so waiting for the Declaration of War event to fire before doing so manually, but the aftermath of the conflict seemed to have taken none of my choices in the lead-up events into account. The Declaration of War on Croatia after they fell the Ustase was also significantly delayed, firing close to a year after the coup, and for some reason I was not allowed to place a frontline on their Southern Border (or alongside Serbia for that matter). The first time I fought the Italo-Turkish War the Italian Levant only had a skeleton crew alongside the Turkish border (in favor of the Suez), and then proceeded to get themselves encircled and smashed in the matter of weeks before my volunteers could arrive; I've seen the Levant perform well in most of my games, but for whatever reason this time they failed spectacularly. Manually moved the Levant's units around so that they'd be on the Turkish border come the war and managed a victory, which felt as though something was going right...... until they were overthrown by the Arab Nationalists. The inability to do anything about that was...... well it was just another mark alongside the others. Honestly, I feel as though Italy should have at least some say in which focuses its direct puppets, the Levant, the Gulf, Algeria, pursue, as especially in the first case I have found that the AI has little to no idea how to balance the scale between the Irgun and the Arabs, and only manages to do so by sheer luck.
There is also the Empire Management System which, honestly, doesn't seem to have much of a purpose beyond deciding whether you want an area to collapse or not. I've never invested more than two points into any region (nor does it seem possible to), and at times those points can be stuck in those regions when they may no longer be necessary. This is probably a case where the Middle East and North Africa reworks will have it make more sense, but at the moment I can't tell if I would be locked out of certain decisions with only a single point available.
So, what would I change outside of general bugfixing:
- The Italian Diplomacy GUI needs a major retooling. For one, it needs to be made apparent that when you click the button to influence a country in your sphere you are actually doing so over time; for a lot of people the change from a paid cost of (75) pp to increase influence to what is in place now wasn't apparent. I'd also suggest the map itself be expanded to include all nations and regions which come under Italian influence, including Algeria, whatever State(s) that arise from the Levant, Yemen, the Italian colonies, Iraq, etc.
- There need to be edits to AI behavior so that they will ignore the borders of countries with which they would normally be aligned, and they also need to move their troops into position in the days or weeks before a War is about to start.
- In the case of a Turkish victory in the Italo-Turkish War, it is stated in the event that the Dodecanese and Cyprus are ceded to Turkey by the Italians, something which doesn't actually happen. Not sure if this was a simple oversight or if the Treaty Terms themselves changed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As an aside, something that I think would actually greatly benefit the Mod are Country-Specific Research Modifiers, somewhat akin to the Tech Schools that existed in Victoria and Victoria 2. While not especially important, I have noticed that I tend to drive my research in a very specific direction no matter what country I am playing as, and so far there hasn't been much incentive for me to do otherwise. Conceptually, this would mean that certain countries are more skilled in developing tech in certain fields, worse so in others. It would add another level of flavor, but also better represent a country's strengths and weaknesses, pushing players to adapt their strategies around them; these Modifiers would ideally change over time though, principally through focuses that reflect research buffs already.
