Barren Wastelands

[unmerged(58571)]

Does anyone have any ideas for how to make the barren wastelands most of the world consists of, even in Europe, more attractive to conquer, or at least less attractive to deliberately lose control of to burden one's enemies' TC?
The problem is that most provinces produce nothing but partisans. I have already made some changes to the manpower distribution so that every province produces manpower, but this is not enough for the average occupied province to provide enough manpower for a full infantry division in a decade even if it is not overseas. I've been toying with the idea of doing something similar to IC (which would also have a positive effect on minor nations' doubly punished research), but I think it would look odd to have the Gobi desert, Sahara and random jungle islands full of factories and it could be hard to balance.
So, any inspiration for me?

 

[Edzako]

What do you mean with double punished research ? Also - why do you think those territories must be worth conquering, because of historical reasons(although I can't recal any) or to make game more interesting ? What could make Africa more atttractive to conquer is resources.

 

[unmerged(58571)]

The minors both have fewer slots because they have lower base IC and also significantly worse tech teams to occupy those slots.

Unfortunately, with the resource flooding I've already done to keep the AI alive, it just isn't possible to make Africa (or other areas) attractive simply by adding more resources.
I'm also not particularly interested in Africa because of the province sizes and travel times there are not really compatible with the combat engine and it's just too boring when it takes week to travel from province to province; I'm more concerned with the European wastelands.

 

[Edzako]

The minors both have fewer slots because they have lower base IC and also significantly worse tech teams to occupy those slots.

Unfortunately, with the resource flooding I've already done to keep the AI alive, it just isn't possible to make Africa (or other areas) attractive simply by adding more resources.
I'm also not particularly interested in Africa because of the province sizes and travel times there are not really compatible with the combat engine and it's just too boring when it takes week to travel from province to province; I'm more concerned with the European wastelands.

Hmm considering that main aggressor in Europe is Germany adding manpower sounds like good idea even 1/2 MP in each province would be nice to have. For example Spain, they have ~approximately 25 provinces in Europe, 25*1.5*0.15(with right minister)= 0.038 additional MP, yhat would make new inf div in 300 days. Erm you are right not really worth it. Maybe create some really powerful puppets (like Iberian federation or West Europe ) then it would be worth to conquer and release them.

 

[lordvagrant]

You could change the manpower in each province to original * 8, and spread the original * 2 into empty provinces.
Then in misc.txt change these:

# National Province Manpower Multiplier (income per day)
	0.01
# Non-National Province Manpower Multiplier (income per day.) Note: Some types of ministers can affect this value.
	0.001

to:

# National Province Manpower Multiplier (income per day)
	0.001
# Non-National Province Manpower Multiplier (income per day.) Note: Some types of ministers can affect this value.
	0.0001

I don't think you can do quite the same for resources unless you wanted to increase convoy numbers (& reduce costs). Also I'm not sure where you can change the resource cost per IC