Changing the distribution of manpower in the 1936 scenario (i.e. Indonesia has 0MP!)

[Mr_B0narpte]

After some discussion in the 'What is up with the victory points thread?' I believe it is time for a separate thread on this issue, here are some starters:

I would say provinces that had the most inhabitants should be displayed by manpower (Indonesia is an extreme example of this, apparently 0 people lived there).

On the Manpower thing: IMHO manpower does not reflect absolute population, but population that can be readily drafted into the army. If the province has lots of population, but they're all subsistence farmers, it should have zero MP (unless you have another agricultural region with overproduction you can feed them with). The actual numbers on the map are probably just as messed up as VP and IC are, but low MP in populous underdeveloped counties is somewhat justified. It should be handled by technology and infra only, but the engine is too limited to do it that way.

MP values are delicate to twink : it's dangerous balance-wise and I agree with the philosophy that MP is "mobilisable manpower to fight for their current country in 1936 after colonial multipliers", neither strict headcount nor "MP in 2013" nor "strategic value in 2013".

@manpower diskussion: At the moment Indonesia has no manpower if released. But it has a drain on manpower due to aging of manpower in province buildings. Imo any country controlling all its national provinces should have a daily increase in manpower, even if it is a very small one. Right now it is somehow messed up.

 

[Emmanuel_M]

Who plays AOD to play Indonesia anyways ?

I agree that giving the country a +1 or +2 MP in certain provinces,e specially in Indonesia's core, would increase coherence, but this seems a VERY marginal issue.

IMHO the discussion about giving MP to provinces should be linked with :
* Cold War discussion (which needs to "populate" non-western countries)
* CORE's system of "industrial level", were climbing a level somewhere in the scenario should give you a solid boost in "base MP of your cores"
* Otherwise, very marginal adjustments

 

[Autolykos]

Who plays AOD to play Indonesia anyways ?

Those who aren't quite as hardcore as to try world domination with Albania

This issue mainly seems to concern revolters, as any nation on the map in 1936 is tweaked to be playable, sometimes ridiculously so (or can you show me 5 IC's worth of factories in Bhutan?). Africa seems to have the same problem, the revolters there also lack MP. And to add insult to injury, most don't even have IC or resources, so they will be utterly useless when liberated. This is demonstrated quite well in The Abyss, where the African PR is quite short on MP, when that's pretty much the only thing they shouldn't be short on.

The clean way (one is allowed to dream...) would be to have MP=Population*TechFactor*InfraFactor*Motivation
With TechFactor being set by Industry and Agriculture Efficiency, InfraFactor (you guessed it) by province Infra level, and Motivation (or "Motivation") mainly determined by cores, ministers, revolt risk and sliders.

But with the engine as it is, we'll have to pull it off with what we have. The requirements (IMHO):
- Not touching MP and cores in developed countries. They work fine, and re-balancing them would be a royal PITA.
- Not changing the effective MP output from colonies much, to keep the war in Europe balanced.
- Increasing the MP of liberated colonies as close to realistic/plausible values as possible.
- Simulating that some countries got lots of volunteers from colonies, while others got almost nil.

The tools we have:
- Tweaking the MP levels in provinces (duh!)
- Deciding which colonies get cores and which don't
- Adjusting the "colonial MP" stats for ministers/ideas

My proposition (rather radical, but I'm prepared to compromise):
- Remove all cores on colonies, unless necessary to prevent ahistorical revolts.
- Reduce default colonial MP multiplier to almost zero, but allow it to go up to (or close to) one with the right combination of ministers/ideas
- Increase MP in colonial provinces to sane values, and balance the effective MP the European countries get from them with their minister/idea choices

 

[bosman]

Maybe this looks marginal, but it isn't that much IMO. Why other colonial countries have adequately populated overseas, while Indonesia looks like wild region with only animals living there?
BTW, shouldn't Tripoli have also 1 MP ?

 

[Mr_B0narpte]

I agree with what Autolykos has said. The current situation, of most of Africa and all of Indonesia not having any manpower, does not make much sense. So long as the European empires do not significantly benefit from any manpower changes, I see nothing wrong with this. Tripoli and other parts of Libya should have 1MP or more.

 

[Lord Jarski]

Most revolter nations have got the events in ai_revolters.txt that give them the free IC and resources. Ive added in my scenario free manpower income to some more commonly liberated puppets that lack manpower completely.

A solution might be to add "command = { type = province_manpower which = ID value = X }" lines to the revolter events, which give the realistic manpower to the revolter nations provinces upon its liberation.

 

[Mr_B0narpte]

Most revolter nations have got the events in ai_revolters.txt that give them the free IC and resources. Ive added in my scenario free manpower income to some more commonly liberated puppets that lack manpower completely.

Another reason as to why your mod is awesome

A solution might be to add "command = { type = province_manpower which = ID value = X }" lines to the revolter events, which give the realistic manpower to the revolter nations provinces upon its liberation.

I guess. But I would still prefer the map itself to correctly represent the manpower of countries, as I view your suggestion as quick fix, and one that may not be realised to exist by most AoDers.

 

[bestmajor]

Bonaparte, why didnt you leave this discussion in bosmans thread?

anyway here my suggestions for N-Africa, mid-east:

Algiers 1 MP
Oran 1 MP
Tripolis, LBY 1 MP
Alexandria 1 MP
Cairo 1 MP
Jerusalem 1 MP



indonesia:
Batavia 1 MP (maybe one more in Sumatra)

(havent looked up pakistan, but i think 3 for the whole country could be cool + 1 VP)

i'm a bit conservative for sub-sahara africa, but one each for kenya, nigeria, ghana wont hurt

 

[bosman]

AFAIK, there is a possibility to add MP to the map via events. Better than offmap, although it's always better to be present as starting condition, at least with scenario, if not in province.csv file.

Oh and according to last bestmajor's post, i would only like to say, that it's quite easy to rework all manpower system and distribution. We could mod proper entry in misc.txt to lower manpower growth and then proportionally increase MP points in every province. this would allow us to distribute manpower more flexibly. Because the game doesn't support decimal values of province MP, the lowest value is 1, which might be quite high in some cases. This method would simulate decimal values, but of course it should be something like 0.5 simulated MP point. Too detailed system is likely to make things even worse.

 

[Mr_B0narpte]

Bonaparte, why didnt you leave this discussion in bosmans thread?

Because I didn't realise bosman's thread until after I had made this thread. I made this thread due to many people bringing up manpower distribution in the thread on VPs.

 

[bestmajor]

ah, sorry.
well, if more than 5 people are up for it and bosman already volunteered to do this i would propose to make some kind of map-thread. if 5 people agree to a certain thing without any veto (eg urban Paris) we could implement the change for a 1.09 (in case there's a will for that from BL-Logics side). sorry i cant do that as i'm busy with the leaders/ministers .

oh, and i'm all for the provinces.csv instead of events / offmap stuff and such

NOTE: if somebody wants to improve the leaders of a certain country, i've made appr 4000-500 pics in colour. i can convert them easily into B&W again as proven in the "SU improved" thread. so at least you have a lot of options for GER and SOV. (ENG and USA are both at appr 500 pics each)

 

[Mr_B0narpte]

ah, sorry.

No worries.

well, if more than 5 people are up for it and bosman already volunteered to do this i would propose to make some kind of map-thread. if 5 people agree to a certain thing without any veto (eg urban Paris) we could implement the change for a 1.09 (in case there's a will for that from BL-Logics side).

I'm up for such changes. But not sure how much help I can be as I've never edited the province file before.

 

[bestmajor]

well, thats actually easy if you dont move harbours around,etc

lets take Dover

you'll find the name/ID in config/province_names

PROV20;Dover;Dover;Dover;Dover;Dover;Dover;;Äóâð;;;x

now you know that this province has the ID 20

open DB/provinces.CSV, there you'll find province 20

20;PROV20;East England;England;Europe;Temperate;Clear;;;100;;1;1;2395;4;4;0;4;7;2;14653....

maybe easier to read this from right to left

2: Rare Materials
7: Energy
4: Metal
0: Oil
4: MP
4: IC

then information about the port

;Beaches;Port Allowed;Port Seazone;

100: infra

thats it basically. toy around with these values and load up a new game to see the changes you made. just save your original before.
this will change the checksum but you wont be able to crash your game

this one will help as well http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi2wiki/index.php/Provinces_by_ID,_part_1

 

[Autolykos]

But not sure how much help I can be as I've never edited the province file before.

Excel (or OO Calc) does the job quite nicely (sorting is a very comfortable feature you'd miss out on when using notepad), but Excel leaves "" around all names when saving. Just open it in notepad afterwards, replace the " with nothing, re-add the empty line at the end and you're good to go.

EDIT: Something I usually do when editing province.csv is creating another column and copying in the names from config/province_names.csv. Just remember to remove the column again when you're done.

 

[Mr_B0narpte]

Ahh ok, thanks bestmajor and Autolykos. I'll help if anyone has some suggestions on further edits, on top of what bosman has done (hoping the developers will allow these changes for 1.09).

 

[alufdufe]

Personally, I would rather see the changes made to .INC files for a specific scenario, rather than the province.csv file. Changing the province.csv file changes every scenario in the game rather than the specific one you are modding. It seems like less work to mod one scenario, rather than have to playtest every change effect for every scenario before you could include this in 1.09.

EDIT: For example, changing Japan's manpower in province.csv could have an adverse effect on the Downfall scenario.

 

[Autolykos]

I would not touch MP in industrialized nations anyway. Precisely because it is very hard to balance (and also because it is mostly fine now). The problem is colonies, and there arent many battle scenarios about these (Suez crisis and India/Pakistan are the only ones I remember). Besides, battle scenarios are on a short timescale, where a little more or less manpower in provinces won't mess things up. It's the Grand Campaign where these effects will be most noticable (and where they need to be fixed).

 

[Commander666]

And regarding the zero MP in Indonesia, just so everybody knows - when Netherlands gets kicked out of Europe and sets up capital in Batavia - Netherlands (not Indonesia) has zero MP!

However, they do have 7 factories (9 IC) and are building two lines of INF (which are going nowhere because zero MP). Further, all the Netherlands divisions are slowly dying (attritioning).

And for those that think Indonesia was full of undraftable "subsistence farmers" back before it was or became Indonesia therefore justifying zero military MP they are quite wrong. Actually, during WW2 the Dutch East Indies had thousands of both military and civilian Dutch. The notion that anything can justify this area not having a suitable population base to support an army is just silly. Low MP is one thing. Zero MP is just rediculous, IMO.

To clarify, I'm playing the 1936 game as Britain, and have MC of Netherlands. And the Dutch East Indies are a lot more important than AoD allotes MP to.

Dutch East Indies Population in 1939 - 60,727,233
Civilian Deaths in WW2 - 4,000,000

I think one could maybe draft a division or two from 60 million! :rofl:

 

[Tomnoddy]

How should the UK's manpower be handled? UK gets so much from India, the best way to play them seems to be to build masses and masses of INF and just crush the enemy in human wave attacks. They have far more than France, yet started the war with a much smaller army. India herself, despite a vast population, has hardly any military and can quite easily be taken by a few Japanese.

The reality was that India had a very large army and would likely resist the Japs fiercely, but only a small proportion were willing to fight in Europe on behalf of their colonial oppressors. SMEP handled it differently, treating India as a puppet of the UK. Fair enough, but the UK player can still military control this puppet and send its entire army to Europe. In practice, that would have led to a revolt!

Perhaps regular event would be the way to go -

"Indian Manpower"

Some Indian soldiers are willing to fight for the UK, especially given the much higher pay than they'd earn in their own army.

Option 1 "Yes please"

New Infantry division arrives
Subtract 150 money.

Option 2 "Not this time"

 

[Pang Bingxun]

Unless UK Capital is changed to India the UK has little manpower available.