• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
I always thought that part of the reason that elite units cost more manpower and militia units cost less manpower was to reflect the different manpower required. You can't throw a 60 year old man into an elite mountain unit, but you could put him in the volkssturm.

I don't like that resources and IC don't require manpower. I think the game should have a more complete treatment of resource gathering. Each province should have a limit for each resource that can be extracted efficiently by a maximum manpower (X0). When the amount of manpower X satisfies X<X0, resources equals X*Y, where each X manpower would each produce Y resources. For X>X0, . Above that limit then X manpower would produce Yexp(-C*(X-X0)) where C is for balance. So total resources produced would keep increasing with more manpower but would have diminishing returns. So if I really want to produce oil as Germany, I need to throw a lot of manpower at it. That said, I don't think that paradox will ever implement something like this. In any case, I would take railroads before this resource system.
 
I always thought that part of the reason that elite units cost more manpower and militia units cost less manpower was to reflect the different manpower required. You can't throw a 60 year old man into an elite mountain unit, but you could put him in the volkssturm.

I don't like that resources and IC don't require manpower. I think the game should have a more complete treatment of resource gathering. Each province should have a limit for each resource that can be extracted efficiently by a maximum manpower (X0). When the amount of manpower X satisfies X<X0, resources equals X*Y, where each X manpower would each produce Y resources. For X>X0, . Above that limit then X manpower would produce Yexp(-C*(X-X0)) where C is for balance. So total resources produced would keep increasing with more manpower but would have diminishing returns. So if I really want to produce oil as Germany, I need to throw a lot of manpower at it. That said, I don't think that paradox will ever implement something like this. In any case, I would take railroads before this resource system.

The problem is you don't need to throw more manpower at resource production to create more resources, you can do that if you want, but you can also throw machines at the problem as well, and they will do a better job. That's why the US can produce so much food even today, we have some of the largest farms and it only takes a few tractors to produce enough grain to feed several hundred people for a year.

Or you could take the China route and throw manpower at it. They haven't adopted machine based agriculture and mining as the US has because it would cause widespread mass unemployment when you replace millions of workers with workers that drive machines.
 
The problem is you don't need to throw more manpower at resource production to create more resources, you can do that if you want, but you can also throw machines at the problem as well, and they will do a better job. That's why the US can produce so much food even today, we have some of the largest farms and it only takes a few tractors to produce enough grain to feed several hundred people for a year.

Or you could take the China route and throw manpower at it. They haven't adopted machine based agriculture and mining as the US has because it would cause widespread mass unemployment when you replace millions of workers with workers that drive machines.

Agreed. That is (arguably) adding another layer of complexity (and realism) which I do support. You could also use a similar model for replacing manpower with machines where again there is some maximum beyond with you have diminishing returns.
 
They can't add manpower to resources/IC without hitting the slippery slope of what is manpower. Easier to just let manpower represent the pool of raw recruits.
 
They can't add manpower to resources/IC without hitting the slippery slope of what is manpower. Easier to just let manpower represent the pool of raw recruits.

Don't be so unambitious. This is a new game, there should be some real improvements, not just prettier graphics. HOI3 manpower was terrible anyway. HPP was a little better, but industry should require manpower too.
 
That isn´t the problem per se. The problem was that it wasn´t transparent and logical.

If you have 1 million able people to serve in the army and those people are dead, it makes sense that you can´t reinforce armies anymore. The problem was the number of people available and growth rate were fantastic and as said before, you couldn´t realocate people at the cost of eficiency to the industry and economy.
Well if Germany starts with a base of 250k reserves and then is gaining about 10k a month in volunteers then this is pretty realistic since these are people coming of age.
 
In EvsW you have population of your nation which is summarized from all regions of your country, each region has own population and workers limit and free workers which can work in factories. Your limit of forces recruits who can be called upon in the army is a few percent of your all population
*had *was *could
;_;
 
What game did these people play that say that the manpower was fine in HOI3???? Every multi player game I was in, was decided by either Germany or Russia running out of manpower generally before the start on 1943!

In those games, were Germany or Russia over building? You can't keep churning out units until you exhaust your manpower. At some point you have to stop making new units and use the remaining manpower for replacing losses.

The AI was bad about this. It tended to build way too many units and exhaust its manpower.

Well if Germany starts with a base of 250k reserves and then is gaining about 10k a month in volunteers then this is pretty realistic since these are people coming of age.

If we assume 70 million population for Germany and an average lifespan of 70 years and equally distributed demographics, this woud result in 41k males coming of age each month. 10k into military service would be committing 25% of your adult male population to direct military service. I do not know how this committment level would compare to historical. This also does not factor in retirement.
 
Last edited:
Part of the reason MP was skewed and ambiguously defined in HOI3 was for balance reasons. That is not to defend it, just stating the obvious.

I am all for MP being adjusted away from historical levels for balance. I don't see why MP can't be managed with two components. A number that reflects whatever they want to define as a nations available pool for working age males. The other component would be a slider bar that represents how much of this MP you are devoting towards industry/military. This is separate from total number of factories or potential IC. It would be a modifier that affects your total IC. This solves several different problems. You now always know what your max available resource pool for the army is. You can even cap the slider at the military end at say 80% or so to reflect the fact that no matter how badly you need MP some people just aren't fit for military duty or will be unavailable to serve because of other needs (police, hospitals, government, etc.) You can now control your own rate of mobilization. Want to mobilize another round of men from industry? Great, just tweak the slider bar alittle more. Of course this will lower your "IC coefficient" some, but hey, there is always a price. The player now has complete control. It also solves the problem of adding women into the work force. Women into the work force can be applied as an IC coefficient as well. It can be a decision in game or another slider bar. The more you tweak the slider bar towards women working, or the more you hit the "mobilize Rosie" event button. your IC coefficient increases, but you may be subject to drawbacks of whatever. This enables you to keep up your IC at a certain level while freeing up more men to join the fun times at the front. Very easy to model, not sure it would even be that difficult to code. And it seems to solve the majority of the problems people have with MP modeling.

You could even tie a quality modifier to the MP slider bar. The further it is towards max military, the lower the quality coefficient is. This simulates drafting lower and lower quality people into the army. So quality would then be a function of your training laws (or whatever system is in place) and what could basically be described as your mobilization level.
 
Last edited:
Part of the reason MP was skewed and ambiguously defined in HOI3 was for balance reasons. That is not to defend it, just stating the obvious.

I am all for MP being adjusted away from historical levels for balance. I don't see why MP can't be managed with two components. A number that reflects whatever they want to define as a nations available pool for working age males. The other component would be a slider bar that represents how much of this MP you are devoting towards industry/military. This is separate from total number of factories or potential IC. It would be a modifier that affects your total IC. This solves several different problems. You now always know what your max available resource pool for the army is. You can even cap the slider at the military end at say 80% or so to reflect the fact that no matter how badly you need MP some people just aren't fit for military duty or will be unavailable to serve because of other needs (police, hospitals, government, etc.) You can now control your own rate of mobilization. Want to mobilize another round of men from industry? Great, just tweak the slider bar alittle more. Of course this will lower your "IC coefficient" some, but hey, there is always a price. The player now has complete control. It also solves the problem of adding women into the work force. Women into the work force can be applied as an IC coefficient as well. It can be a decision in game or another slider bar. The more you tweak the slider bar towards women working, or the more you hit the "mobilize Rosie" event button. your IC coefficient increases, but you may be subject to drawbacks of whatever. This enables you to keep up your IC at a certain level while freeing up more men to join the fun times at the front. Very easy to model, not sure it would even be that difficult to code. And it seems to solve the majority of the problems people have with MP modeling.

You could even tie a quality modifier to the MP slider bar. The further it is towards max military, the lower the quality coefficient is. This simulates drafting lower and lower quality people into the army. So quality would then be a function of your training laws (or whatever system is in place) and what could basically be described as your mobilization level.

That all sounds pretty good.
 
"Adjusted from historical levels for balance"?!

War is not balanced, or nobody would ever win it. Though it is arguable that no one wins in war anyway, I doubt that equalising German and Soviet manpower would contribute much more to the game than making Barbarossa even easier than it already is (encirclement from Turkey and Finland, anyone?)

Playing the Axis should be hard mode. Very hard mode. Playing the losers in any situation should be a way to increase the challenge.
 
Part of the reason MP was skewed and ambiguously defined in HOI3 was for balance reasons. That is not to defend it, just stating the obvious.

I am all for MP being adjusted away from historical levels for balance. I don't see why MP can't be managed with two components. A number that reflects whatever they want to define as a nations available pool for working age males. The other component would be a slider bar that represents how much of this MP you are devoting towards industry/military. This is separate from total number of factories or potential IC. It would be a modifier that affects your total IC. This solves several different problems. You now always know what your max available resource pool for the army is. You can even cap the slider at the military end at say 80% or so to reflect the fact that no matter how badly you need MP some people just aren't fit for military duty or will be unavailable to serve because of other needs (police, hospitals, government, etc.) You can now control your own rate of mobilization. Want to mobilize another round of men from industry? Great, just tweak the slider bar alittle more. Of course this will lower your "IC coefficient" some, but hey, there is always a price. The player now has complete control. It also solves the problem of adding women into the work force. Women into the work force can be applied as an IC coefficient as well. It can be a decision in game or another slider bar. The more you tweak the slider bar towards women working, or the more you hit the "mobilize Rosie" event button. your IC coefficient increases, but you may be subject to drawbacks of whatever. This enables you to keep up your IC at a certain level while freeing up more men to join the fun times at the front. Very easy to model, not sure it would even be that difficult to code. And it seems to solve the majority of the problems people have with MP modeling.

You could even tie a quality modifier to the MP slider bar. The further it is towards max military, the lower the quality coefficient is. This simulates drafting lower and lower quality people into the army. So quality would then be a function of your training laws (or whatever system is in place) and what could basically be described as your mobilization level.
I like this. Make it happen Paradox!...pleeease :)
 
Part of the reason MP was skewed and ambiguously defined in HOI3 was for balance reasons. That is not to defend it, just stating the obvious.

I am all for MP being adjusted away from historical levels for balance. I don't see why MP can't be managed with two components. A number that reflects whatever they want to define as a nations available pool for working age males. The other component would be a slider bar that represents how much of this MP you are devoting towards industry/military. This is separate from total number of factories or potential IC. It would be a modifier that affects your total IC. This solves several different problems. You now always know what your max available resource pool for the army is. You can even cap the slider at the military end at say 80% or so to reflect the fact that no matter how badly you need MP some people just aren't fit for military duty or will be unavailable to serve because of other needs (police, hospitals, government, etc.) You can now control your own rate of mobilization. Want to mobilize another round of men from industry? Great, just tweak the slider bar alittle more. Of course this will lower your "IC coefficient" some, but hey, there is always a price. The player now has complete control. It also solves the problem of adding women into the work force. Women into the work force can be applied as an IC coefficient as well. It can be a decision in game or another slider bar. The more you tweak the slider bar towards women working, or the more you hit the "mobilize Rosie" event button. your IC coefficient increases, but you may be subject to drawbacks of whatever. This enables you to keep up your IC at a certain level while freeing up more men to join the fun times at the front. Very easy to model, not sure it would even be that difficult to code. And it seems to solve the majority of the problems people have with MP modeling.

You could even tie a quality modifier to the MP slider bar. The further it is towards max military, the lower the quality coefficient is. This simulates drafting lower and lower quality people into the army. So quality would then be a function of your training laws (or whatever system is in place) and what could basically be described as your mobilization level.

I'm not sure if I'd go for something exactly like this, but this kind of idea more generally would be tops - managing manpower was one of the key strategic issues faced by most of the major powers at some stage or other. If it would be possible to easily get the declining quality of manpower later in the war for some powers as they'd already run through their 'military-rated' population that'd be particularly good :).
 
How about foreign MP?

Read about a manchurian soldier, force enlisted into the Jap army, taken prisoner by the sov, in 38 I think. Force enlisted in RA and taken prisoner by Ger in 41-42, force enlisted into Wehrmacht and then taken prisoner by the allies in 44 in normandy

And how would you calculate all the forced labout that germany had from occupied countries?
 
You were close, he was in Manchuria when he was conscripted

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Kyoungjong

Ye gads, poor bloke, he did well to survive that! I hope he got an honourable mention in the Guinness Book of Records or something. For foreign MP in the game, I suspect that'll be a bit tricky to get in there sensibly, beyond the manpower you get from conquered provinces ("Lucky" Yang's entry into the IJA would be covered in HoI3 by Korean MP that went to Japan, but keeping track of him once he'd been captured by the Russians and then the Germans sounds more effort than it's worth, not to mention may well start to skate fairly close to some stuff that we shouldn't be talking about).
 
I'm generally more in favor of cutting down monthly MP income substantially, and having conscription laws give large increases of manpower. For example, switching to three year draft would give you a large influx of manpower over a few weeks or months, but then a small trickle afterwards that represents annual increases.

I'd also have industry require manpower to fuel. If we wanted to go reaaaaly deep, you'd have the ability as totalitarian government types to press local workers in occupied territories into industrial MP to free up manpower for your armies.
 
Part of the reason MP was skewed and ambiguously defined in HOI3 was for balance reasons. That is not to defend it, just stating the obvious.

I am all for MP being adjusted away from historical levels for balance. I don't see why MP can't be managed with two components. A number that reflects whatever they want to define as a nations available pool for working age males. The other component would be a slider bar that represents how much of this MP you are devoting towards industry/military. This is separate from total number of factories or potential IC. It would be a modifier that affects your total IC. This solves several different problems. You now always know what your max available resource pool for the army is. You can even cap the slider at the military end at say 80% or so to reflect the fact that no matter how badly you need MP some people just aren't fit for military duty or will be unavailable to serve because of other needs (police, hospitals, government, etc.) You can now control your own rate of mobilization. Want to mobilize another round of men from industry? Great, just tweak the slider bar alittle more. Of course this will lower your "IC coefficient" some, but hey, there is always a price. The player now has complete control. It also solves the problem of adding women into the work force. Women into the work force can be applied as an IC coefficient as well. It can be a decision in game or another slider bar. The more you tweak the slider bar towards women working, or the more you hit the "mobilize Rosie" event button. your IC coefficient increases, but you may be subject to drawbacks of whatever. This enables you to keep up your IC at a certain level while freeing up more men to join the fun times at the front. Very easy to model, not sure it would even be that difficult to code. And it seems to solve the majority of the problems people have with MP modeling.

You could even tie a quality modifier to the MP slider bar. The further it is towards max military, the lower the quality coefficient is. This simulates drafting lower and lower quality people into the army. So quality would then be a function of your training laws (or whatever system is in place) and what could basically be described as your mobilization level.

I´m fine with that as long as the base MP value HAS to do with the historical Manpower/demographics and not a fantastic number..