Change the name of Quantity Idea "The Young Can Serve"

[SignedName]

All the descriptions for ideas are really nothing more than flavor text, so it is understandable that people would think the OP is looking too deeply into it.

However, I think this also hints at another issue with manpower. If you started drafting more men than normal into your army, then shouldn't there be some averse side effects on your economy?

Conversely, if you only have 10% of your total manpower, then shouldn't you be facing some severe economic penalties? After all, 90% of the eligible men that could be drafted were pretty much killed off. I know that there are some disaster events that triggers with low manpower (along with other conditions) but this isn't really evident.

HoI4 seemed to address this issue by tying in larger manpower recruitment with more severe economic penalties.

One could get around this issue by saying that the increased manpower represents a more efficient system for utilizing manpower than actually taking more men out of the economy. Tax boni work the same way- it's not that the people are being taxed more, it's that the government is getting more efficient at collecting taxes.

 

[Andrew4250]

Another way of thinking this is that men can marry at a different age. It was acceptable for a 30-40 year old male to marry a teenage girl at this time. Heck men even older then that had really young wives.

So it's mathematically possible for a country to use up its supply of young men and still maintain a growing population. As long as we're not talking something over 30% of the entire male population and none of the wars at the time had anywhere near that casulty rate

 

[Incompetent]

Another way of thinking this is that men can marry at a different age. It was acceptable for a 30-40 year old male to marry a teenage girl at this time. Heck men even older then that had really young wives.

So it's mathematically possible for a country to use up its supply of young men and still maintain a growing population. As long as we're not talking something over 30% of the entire male population and none of the wars at the time had anywhere near that casulty rate

The Thirty Years' War caused death on this scale at least. (Most from epidemics rather than battles, but that's true of practically every war before the late 19th century.)

 

[Guardian54]

Another way of thinking this is that men can marry at a different age. It was acceptable for a 30-40 year old male to marry a teenage girl at this time. Heck men even older then that had really young wives.

So it's mathematically possible for a country to use up its supply of young men and still maintain a growing population. As long as we're not talking something over 30% of the entire male population and none of the wars at the time had anywhere near that casulty rate

I never said anything about the men also being necessarily young. However, if you kill off a lot the young men, you eventually run into the problem of fewer older men too, after about 20 years.

Even 5% of the male population being lost still means probably half that number of spinsters i.e. women going unmarried until they were "too old to marry", particularly in European monogamy. Drafting these women, even if for non-combat tasks such as logistics and supply train escort, would make more sense as manpower recovery than drafting the younger males.
...And no supply train escort is not euphemistic for whores, that would be buffing army morale instead, as the contribution to manpower recovery would be puny..

I do point out that a majority of marriages were still of relatively low age gap, particularly among the peasantry.

 

[Shumpitostick]

I'm surprised nobody caught the mathematical problem: You're looking only at the change of manpower and not at the manpower itself. when you decided, for example, to recruit 15-17 year olds, you've increased your manpower pool. that change is permanent. There will always be more 15-40 olds than 18-40 year old. Let's take this logic to the extreme. We recruit only 20 year olds and release them at 21. By this logic you will have the same manpower. This is only true when all people die at the army and only new recruits matter. This confusion comes from the manpower system which is, understandably, unrealistic. You have the same max manpower with 100k troops and with none. What matters in manpower is the amount of men that can serve and not the change in it.

About demographic change: In early modern times, before the industrial revolution, population was determined mostly by food available. If more young men served and/or died, it would be countered by higher birth rates (baby boom) and by lower death rates (less famine)

And while there were some women heroes, they never came in large numbers but in exceptional women who took leading roles

 

[Sheriff Godwin Law]

Your reasoning is based on soldiers not "screwing around."

And you're equating the manpower pool to actively serving soldiers, instead of what it is, a pool of potential recruits that can be tapped without hindering war time industries.

I really don't think there is actually a problem here.

 

[Oyubi]

1) Number of kids per woman isn't fixed. More men dying means more kids for the ones who survive due to extra land now available. See the aftermath of the black death.
2) If the age of majority is 20 then it takes 20 years for a new generation to replace the losses from earlier battles. If the age is 18 then is takes 18 (plus 9 months). As long as the age range is dropped by 20% then overall recovery will be 20% quicker.
3) The idea groups don't include the negatives of an idea in any other place so it would be odd to do so here.

Also your massively overstating the affect of western family systems. It was only really a strict thing for the nobility. The peasants actually very rarely got married the propper way in England until the 19th century when various acts meant marriage certificates were needed. Before then if you got a girl pregnant you just said you were already married and no one could prove otherwise. It wasn't a problem finding a replacement man for a female widow since there are naturally more men then women. If the women were younger when their man died then they actually had an even better chance of finding a new partner anyway. That being said even an older woman has a decent chance of finding a man since in this time period we don't have the dainty little housewife of the Victorian ideal, we have farmers doing backbreaking work by modern standards. Men would happily marry someone to get help with the farm. Its actually the fact long term spinsters were so unlikely that made them seem odd not the fact their husband died and society suddenly ostracized a 30 year old.

 

[Guardian54]

1) Number of kids per woman isn't fixed. More men dying means more kids for the ones who survive due to extra land now available. See the aftermath of the black death.
2) If the age of majority is 20 then it takes 20 years for a new generation to replace the losses from earlier battles. If the age is 18 then is takes 18 (plus 9 months). As long as the age range is dropped by 20% then overall recovery will be 20% quicker.
3) The idea groups don't include the negatives of an idea in any other place so it would be odd to do so here.

Also your massively overstating the affect of western family systems. It was only really a strict thing for the nobility. The peasants actually very rarely got married the propper way in England until the 19th century when various acts meant marriage certificates were needed. Before then if you got a girl pregnant you just said you were already married and no one could prove otherwise. It wasn't a problem finding a replacement man for a female widow since there are naturally more men then women. If the women were younger when their man died then they actually had an even better chance of finding a new partner anyway. That being said even an older woman has a decent chance of finding a man since in this time period we don't have the dainty little housewife of the Victorian ideal, we have farmers doing backbreaking work by modern standards. Men would happily marry someone to get help with the farm. Its actually the fact long term spinsters were so unlikely that made them seem odd not the fact their husband died and society suddenly ostracized a 30 year old.

It is true that the dumb blonde thing and the monumental arrogance of men i.e. "Social Darwinism" really got kicked off in Victoria 2's time span.

However, though manpower pool goes up with lowered service age, recovery rate would be the same as long as the supply of food was the same.

Oh, and for devastating wars (and why I'm annoyed population isn't given as a number for each province) and why population isn't just replaced that easily by more births... the late Eastern Han dynasty had 50 million people in its census. The Jin dynasty (the one after the Three Kingdoms period) first census only showed 7 million.

So more deaths = more births is a LIE.

Hmm, you say it takes less time to replace the losses? That's mathematically wrong.

The country has 20 million young males, one million per year from age 0 to age 20 (This means 1 million aged 0-1, 1 million aged 1-2, etc.). This is the "variable block" that reducing conscription age affects. The other 20 million older men are irrelevant. The country is in steady state.

This year, 1 million men reached age 16, army service age.

We lower the draft age to 12. This means 4 million more men are suddenly available.

Next year, how many boys will turn 12? 1 million.

That's the same MP recovery rate as before.

So "The Young Can Serve" is a matter of boosting total manpower pool, NOT the recovery rate.

 

[Parapluman]

You actually need very few males to increase your population.
It's the number of women that is important, besides that you just need a few dozen men and a good schedule.

 

[Tacticus101]

You assume that manpower is the number of men between certain ages, which is not true, manpower is an abstraction. If you have a manpower of 50k and conscript 50k troops, it does not mean you are pushing all your adult male population into a war, France's population at the time was almost 20 million. It was not until the Napoleonic wars, right at the end of the timeframe, that large level conscription was used.

The systems at the time meant that a small proportion of males would actually become soldiers, either through being part of a "military family", signing up for a professional army or becoming a mercenary. It would be nowhere near the entire population and the numbers going to war were unlikely to make that much of a difference on the birth rate of the country if they all died.

What allowing the young to serve achieves is expanding the numbers that will sign up, both because you are expanding the manpower pool and because you can recruit more soldiers before they settle down and have a family or something.

Your entire point is based on a false premise.

Oh, and for devastating wars (and why I'm annoyed population isn't given as a number for each province) and why population isn't just replaced that easily by more births... the late Eastern Han dynasty had 50 million people in its census. The Jin dynasty (the one after the Three Kingdoms period) first census only showed 7 million.

So more deaths = more births is a LIE.

I believe the Census at the start of the Jin dynasty showed 16 million (though maybe there was an earlier one), though the point is still the same.

The thing is though, you are referring to not only deaths due to military attrition but also complete collapse of authority, banditry, large scale massacres from all sides and huge famine. The manpower cost of the wars during the three kingdoms period (and just before, when the kingdoms were forming) was probably quite small compared to the deaths from other causes, there were entire cities that disappeared during that period.

 

[Guardian54]

What allowing the young to serve achieves is expanding the numbers that will sign up, both because you are expanding the manpower pool and because you can recruit more soldiers before they settle down and have a family or something.

Your entire point is based on a false premise.

I believe the Census at the start of the Jin dynasty showed 16 million (though maybe there was an earlier one), though the point is still the same.

The thing is though, you are referring to not only deaths due to military attrition but also complete collapse of authority, banditry, large scale massacres from all sides and huge famine. The manpower cost of the wars during the three kingdoms period (and just before, when the kingdoms were forming) was probably quite small compared to the deaths from other causes, there were entire cities that disappeared during that period.

Europe may not have done as large scale drafts, but ROTW sure did, China when conscripting would have one man from each household drafted for example. And to quote "the Families Left Behind" event regarding the loss of a pair of helping hands... you do remember that event, right? Then I don't need to actually quote it at you.

Have you seen the looting these days, and the colossal attrition rates compared to MP pools?

Then again if we gave ROTW historical conscription rates and population numbers, any player playing Europe would regularly be fighting Ming around the Black Sea by 1600 unless they reinstalled Inward Perfection.

As I amended earlier, letting the young serve boosts total manpower. It should NOT boost manpower RECOVERY the way it does right now.

 

[Tacticus101]

Europe may not have done as large scale drafts, but ROTW sure did, China when conscripting would have one man from each household drafted for example. And to quote "the Families Left Behind" event regarding the loss of a pair of helping hands... you do remember that event, right? Then I don't need to actually quote it at you.

Have you seen the looting these days, and the colossal attrition rates compared to MP pools?

Then again if we gave ROTW historical conscription rates and population numbers, any player playing Europe would regularly be fighting Ming around the Black Sea by 1600 unless they reinstalled Inward Perfection.

As I amended earlier, letting the young serve boosts total manpower. It should NOT boost manpower RECOVERY the way it does right now.

China didn't really, certainly not nationwide which is what you are suggesting. Their army sizes throughout the Ming and later Qing Dynasties were a few hundred thousand whilst the population was between 60 and 400 million. If you can provide some evidence that they did more than draft local forces, I will be interested, because I cant.

And no, I don't remember that event, quote it for me please.

What does attrition and looting have to do with this? Attrition hurts army sizes, as was historical, and looting gives no long term effects on development at the moment.

Yes, if we gave the rest of the world some of its historical army sizes and ignored all other historical effects then you would probably get an ahistorical result. Though considering other strong nations ability to actually conquer (see France), I doubt the AI would get anywhere near the black sea.

 

[Guardian54]

China didn't really, certainly not nationwide which is what you are suggesting. Their army sizes throughout the Ming and later Qing Dynasties were a few hundred thousand whilst the population was between 60 and 400 million. If you can provide some evidence that they did more than draft local forces, I will be interested, because I cant.

And no, I don't remember that event, quote it for me please.

What does attrition and looting have to do with this? Attrition hurts army sizes, as was historical, and looting gives no long term effects on development at the moment.

Yes, if we gave the rest of the world some of its historical army sizes and ignored all other historical effects then you would probably get an ahistorical result. Though considering other strong nations ability to actually conquer (see France), I doubt the AI would get anywhere near the black sea.

"The recent war took a heavy toll on our people. Many were called, few returned. Nobles and peasants toiled alike as they waited for their loved ones to come home, but the war ended and they never did. Now the toiling continues, many so busy trying to make up for the loss of a pair of hands to even grieve. Of those that have time to think, many are now thinking we have thrown away lives too carelessly" Something like that, the choices are -15% taxes, -15% manpower, or +2 unrest IIRC (numbers not sure, but the effect types I remember).

Looting doesn't affect long-term development, which is quite unrealistic. Attrition bleeds army sizes, which while realistic is now, relative to actual manpower, probably close to historical loss rates of national manpower while at war (i.e. very high).

It is true that Chinese drafting was mostly local, or regional, since marching a freshly raised army up from Guangzhou for a war with Oirat would be ridiculously inefficient. However I'm pretty sure the army sizes were well north of a million during those dynasties...or do you mean only professional, career soldiers?

 

[lmw]

This means even less young males "screwing around" (ahem) and thus an even smaller next generation.

So letting the young serve should actually reduce your available manpower (i.e. potential draftees) over the long term, and at most provide a one-time MP boost.

Well, hordes got it figured:
Let it be known that boy cannot be a man unless he has rode first with our invincible host, that he can take no wife until he has defiled another man's wife, that he is not worthy a hut until he has burnt down soneone else's. Let service in our armies be the only route to manhood.

If you still insist you might interpret that nations draft only from ten years, as you regain all your manpower within this timeframe(and yeah, then the young can serve's effect would make even less sense).

 

[net.split]

OP is correct in that the flavor doesn't really match the mechanics. There are plenty of alternates that would work better -- improving birth rates, food to the masses, improved social status for soldiers, granting citizenship to foreign-born fighters, better medicine for treating wounded troops, etc.

But don't think too much about manpower and population implications, because as others have mentioned this starts to reveal the problem with having manpower as a unique pool separate from any domestic population value. Theoretically losing a ton of your population (emptying your manpower pool) should also devastate your economy, especially if this happens over and over again. At the very least some events that sap random province development when manpower is critically low (and similarly boost randomly when it's at maximum) could help as a placeholder mechanic until the future when province development / internals is more deeply designed and intricate.

 

[Tacticus101]

"The recent war took a heavy toll on our people. Many were called, few returned. Nobles and peasants toiled alike as they waited for their loved ones to come home, but the war ended and they never did. Now the toiling continues, many so busy trying to make up for the loss of a pair of hands to even grieve. Of those that have time to think, many are now thinking we have thrown away lives too carelessly" Something like that, the choices are -15% taxes, -15% manpower, or +2 unrest IIRC (numbers not sure, but the effect types I remember).

Ok, so? An exaggerated, narrative event represents what? That people knew soldiers who had died during a long and very costly war? Even a tiny proportion serving in the military would have that same effect.

For example, people talk about the losses in the first world war as a bloody war where entire generations died, roughly 2% of the countries involved populations actually died.
An even deadlier war, the second world war managed up to 8% total deaths (Germany), with the completely devastated USSR managing about 14%.
The most deadly war for the British in history was the (English) Civil war, killing about 5% of the Population of Great Britain.

All these include civilian deaths from non-military factors.

In contrast, the Black death killed 20% of the Population of England, 40-50% of the population of Europe, up to 80% in some southern areas and 30-40% of the middle east. Further recurrences of plague (including during wars) killed 10-20% of areas hit. Famines tended to kill similar proportions, the Irish famines killed up to 40% of the population and the Russian famine during the time of troubles killed about 30%.

War itself is a minor cause of death (unless you are the Mongols) compared to disease and famine except in indirect forms. Its impact on the population of a country was small.

It is true that Chinese drafting was mostly local, or regional, since marching a freshly raised army up from Guangzhou for a war with Oirat would be ridiculously inefficient. However I'm pretty sure the army sizes were well north of a million during those dynasties...or do you mean only professional, career soldiers?

The Qing standing army was at its most about 700k I believe (the Banners/Green Standard) with Ming at far less, campaigns and rebellions put down involved far smaller numbers, maybe a hundred thousand at most. The Japanese invasion of Korea involved maybe 100k Chinese troops. I cant find any examples of battles or armies where China was able to muster much more than that.

 

[Illanair]

You're overthinking this

These are the Paradox forums - If people weren't overthinking everything, they just wouldn't be the same forums we've come to love.

 

[Guardian54]

I remembered something about why women being drafted is in fact valid, they practically launched the French Revolution:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women's_March_on_Versailles

Obviously, this artist here was not in fact bullshitting:

 

[Witty Name Here]

You can get the ahistorical armies of women in 1500s Europe as soon as I get my god-tier katanas and Senpai to notice me.

 

[hashinshin]

If anything quality could unlock an event that fires where you get say +20% manpower recovery but -1 yearly prestige for 20 years called "women soldiers."