Company of Heroes 3 Italian Campaign Guide

This is a work in progress and just contains the skeleton of what I’d like this guide to eventually become.

The purpose of this guide is to help you dear reader to hopefully not suffer through the same mistakes I made when I started playing this game and therefore make better-informed decisions than I did at the time.

However, if you’re short on time, this is my recommendation for what companies to choose for the campaign: Start with US Special Forces, build only those, and rush for the town to unlock UK armor, then just build those until you reach the pop cap.

Thoughts on Campaign Units (other than companies)
Battleships cost way too much pop for what they do. Aircraft Carriers may be worth your time, need more investigation. Planes/Ships aren’t necessarily worth it, it’s just that the opportunity costs of more companies are so high, so until about 20-30 turns in, you almost always want more companies instead of any ships/planes.

A few things to note though:

This upgrade is shared by all companies in the first column, third row.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, it’ll become clear soon enough.

Overview
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Overview
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To unlock this company you must capture Potenza or Ortona

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Overview

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To unlock you this company you must capture Naples or Anzio

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Overview

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Overview
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Overview
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To unlock this company you must capture Bari or Ortona

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Overview
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Under Construction

Under Construction

Build only Special Forces, rush to unlock UK Armor, then build nothing but that until you have enough companies to stretch across the width of Italy. Then, and only then consider building planes, destroyers, or carriers, in that order.

ONLY build Special Forces, no need for UK Armor.

Ignore the long version below, Special Forces allow you to spawn Motor Carriage and Weasel with Engineers equipped with flamethrowers to rush German HQ for super quick wins

The logic behind this advice is simple.
The most common battle you’ll be fighting is skirmishes.
You’ll usually want to play those in order to get more awards and to avoid your companies from taking damage.
In these battles, most of your enemies are infantry or light vehicles, rarely mediums, and almost never heavy tanks. Therefore, you probably want forces best able to deal with such an enemy order of battle.
In addition, many of these battles involve either taking and holding three victory points, surrounding the enemy base or defending against a few waves of attacks, all of which can best be achieved by immediately aggressively moving up to either capture the points or to meet the enemy at their spawn.
The company that will allow you to best do this in my opinion is the UK Armoured Company. However, this is not immediately unlocked upon beginning the campaign. The next best company, that is immediately available upon beginning the campaign is the US Special Forces. They counter infantry by having cheap and plentiful options for flamethrowers, machine guns, and light vehicles. They are also very enjoyable to me personally because one of my pet peeves is how you severely weaken an infantry unit’s ability to fight other infantry upon upgrading to launcher anti-tank weapons, but this is circumvented on the special forces unit by allowing them to switch to their bazookas when encountering armor and then promptly switching back upon eliminating the armored threat.
Even in a long protracted battle, the SSF Commandos are extremely lethal, and this company has some upgrades that benefit all infantry in the form of increasing infantry health, and reducing reinforcement/weapon upgrade costs.
Back to the UK Armored Company, it may take a few battles to really get them going, but most battles will award you two skill points if you play them manually. You need ten skill points to unlock vehicle logistics, so barring any story missions, you’ll need to play five skirmishes in order to level up a company up to this point, but once you have, it’s easy mode. The reason for this is that immediately upon beginning a mission, you’ll be able to spawn two Crusader AA Medium tanks, obliterating any infantry the enemy may have allowing for quick and painless victories, further helped by being able to call in Two Churchills almost near the beginning of a battle too! The early battles are made less painful too because you’re able to call in fuel drops that will make that Crusader even easier to obtain quickly.
I also feel that with the limited population capacity, one should focus on companies to advance quickly, maybe a transport plane if you are full of munitions to resupply your companies to keep advancing, but battleships, fighters, and recon planes all seem to cost too much, especially when you can simply use partisans. However, if you find it fun/amusing to use those units, you totally should!

Conclusion
In conclusion, I believe the most efficient way to play the campaign is with UK Armored Comapny, and the US Special Forces Comapny is an excellent alternative until you unlock them. However, efficiency isn’t everyone’s goal, and that’s understandable. If you wish to play with Airborne or Indian Artillery or anything else, you should, because it’s single player and you should dictate how you’ll most enjoy this game.