What Combat Mission Fortress Italy is
Combat Mission Fortress Italy is a tactical wargame set in the Sicilian campaign of July and August 1943, the opening phase of the western Allies' push into Axis home territory. You command at battalion and below scale in a full 3D environment, ordering individual vehicles, teams, and squads rather than abstract counters. The forces are the historically available American, Italian, and German units that fought in Sicily, including elite formations such as Italian Bersaglieri, American Rangers, and the German Hermann Göring Division. The arid Sicilian terrain shapes how fights play out, and the American and German organizations here differ significantly from those in other Combat Mission games. You get four campaigns and 17 stand-alone battles, plus 38 vehicles and a wide range of other weapons, many of them unique to this title.
Playing it with friends
Missions run in either Real Time or the WeGo hybrid turn mode. In WeGo, each player plans 60 seconds of combat and then both sides' orders resolve simultaneously, and you can re-watch the turn afterward. Head-to-head play works over TCP/IP on a LAN or over the internet, and WeGo also supports play by email and hotseat on a single computer. The Quick Battle system lets each player buy a custom force and pick a battlefield from a wide selection of maps, which is the natural way to set up a match against a friend. A map and scenario editor lets you build battles or campaigns to hand to the rest of the group.
What to know before starting
This is a simulation-heavy game, so expect the systems to matter as much as your orders. Vehicle damage is tracked per sub-system, ballistics and armor values come from real data rather than hitpoints or lookup tables, and weather, lighting, and terrain affect how units and weapons actually function. Soft factors such as Morale, Experience, and Leadership operate at the level of the individual soldier and shape how your troops behave under fire. Fog of War is strict: Relative Spotting means each soldier has their own view, so one unit spotting an enemy does not automatically hand that target to everyone else, and Command and Control governs how information spreads. Missions are built around detailed objectives, so read them before you commit your forces.