Can someone help me figure out this manpower question please?

[Wags43]

I own all DLCs, no mods. I'm playing as USA and defeated Japan by November 1941 (rushed their home islands while their armies were still in China). I annexed the entirety of Japan in the piece deal. I join the Allies in 1943, head to Europe, I'm still newish to the game and I'm taking some heavy losses. I'm set on "service by requirement" and don't want to increase my conscription law again because of the major penalties. So I decide to release Japan as a puppet and use their manpower and I'm not sure what happened.

I had 1.5 million available manpower left. Because I held Japan a while, compliance is high and it says I can use about 1 million of their manpower, so I was expecting to get a ton of Japanese manpower from releasing as a puppet. When I released them, my manpower stayed at 1.5 million and it is saying that Japan now only has 480k manpower available as a puppet.

So where did that 1 million manpower from Japan go? Also, why is it that I can only recruit 480k manpower from them? Shouldn't they have a lot more?

Thanks for any replies, I appreciate the help.

 

[squid_hills]

Your conscription level was at Service By Requirement. What is Japan's at? Because when you released them, they may have started with a lower conscription level, like Limited Conscription or Volunteer Only. That may explain where their manpower went.

Also, I'm concerned by the way you are bleeding manpower as the US. Have you checked your garrison unit setup? Are your garrisons getting chewed up by local resistance, or are your losses strictly on the battlefield?

 

[Wags43]

Your conscription level was at Service By Requirement. What is Japan's at? Because when you released them, they may have started with a lower conscription level, like Limited Conscription or Volunteer Only. That may explain where their manpower went.

Also, I'm concerned by the way you are bleeding manpower as the US. Have you checked your garrison unit setup? Are your garrisons getting chewed up by local resistance, or are your losses strictly on the battlefield?

It was a production problem that I didn't realize. Because I was coming from behind to get into the war, as soon as I had enough equipment I would train a new unit, so I didn't have any extra equipment in my stockpiles. I did make tanks, but I lost a lot from reliability just moving them, and then I couldn't replace them. I was attacking and winning for a little bit, then they were so equipment depleted I stalled. I didn't realize what had happened yet at this point and kept trying to attack, and they just defended while I wasted manpower. Finally realized what had happened and I started moving factories around to try to help the most behind production lines, but that just made everything else go negative too. I switched back to guns and artillery but I haven't caught up on those yet. So I wound up with very poorly equipped divisions. I thought deleting a few divisions would help, but there isn't enough equipment in the divisions I deleted to really help the ones I didn't delete. I then had some weak spots in the line and Germany is attacking, I keep losing at the weak spots, and I now have to keep falling back so the line doesn't break. Like 80% of England's troops are in Africa or Italy, I'm in France. I'm about to just full retreat down to Italy and hope England can save the rest of my troops. Then that could maybe buy me some time to get my production back up. I don't want to restart, I need to figure out how to get out of messes like this.

Japan is set at Volunteer only, so that is what happened! How can I get them to switch to a different level? I also lost some factories, so would it be better to turn them into an integrated puppet? Is there any downside to an integrated puppet?

Thanks for the reply!!

 

[Paul.Ketcham]

The only downsides to integrated puppets are for their own functioning as a nation; if you don't care about them deploying their own troops (and just want to farm their manpower), then there are no downsides other than the mild annoyance of randomly having AI divisions pop up under your control that you can't customize in any way (although, by deleting them, you can return them to local control, but it gets tedious for larger nations). Note that integrated puppets only give factories and reduced manpower for puppet divisions (you still use some of your own, but less than higher autonomy); dockyards will remain in Japanese hands regardless, though you can use them to repair your ships (meaning you have no repair cost to ships repairing in Japanese yards.

 

[Wags43]

Thank you for the information guys, I really appreciate the help. I have one last question if someone doesn't mind. Will Japan switch their conscription law on their own if I run them out of manpower? I really don't want to use console commands yet other than fixing up the map after peace deals, because I want to play multi-player eventually.

Just in case anyone was wondering, I got most of my troops out. I couldn't make it to Italy so I wound up sending some down to Africa and some up to England. There are a few AI divisions still fighting, mostly Belgium, but looks like they aren't going to stop Germany from getting all of France. I'm just going to have to wait a while until I get my equipment back up before trying to get back into Europe. I did add a maintenance crew to most of my divisions so when I go back in maybe I can capture enough equipment to make sure I don't go negative on production again.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Will Japan switch their conscription law on their own if I run them out of manpower?

It should, eventually. Just don't count on AI doing it in a reasonable timeframe >.>

 

[Mister Analyst]

So I wound up with very poorly equipped divisions. I thought deleting a few divisions would help, but there isn't enough equipment in the divisions I deleted to really help the ones I didn't delete.

Instead of deleting divisions, try consolidating your divisions. From the wiki Consolidate:

None

Consolidate

Click the Consolidate button to merge the selected divisions into one unit. This action can be used to take multiple understrength, damaged divisions and create stronger, full strength divisions with no loss of experience. The excess manpower is returned to the recruitable population pool and the excess equipment is returned to the stockpile. Note that this action can only be performed on divisions having the same template.

 

[Bergermeister]

I don’t think that anyone mentioned that you need to use the puppet templates to access their manpower. It doesn’t go to your pool. You just directly recruit units from them instead of waiting for them to do it. It uses your equipment, but mostly their manpower depending on autonomy level.

 

[Wags43]

Wow thank you all for the good information. This game was really tough to get started, but all these little complexities really make it fun without seeming tedious. Really appreciate the help with it!!