Honestly podcat, I don't know short of something like 5-10% PoT manpower bonus would make it better than going harshest occupation. The 100% usage you get from factories and resources at full whips and chains is pretty powerful compared to the manpower trickle from non-core. Adding a couple of % to the already abysmal 2% minus 70% (best occupation malus) isn't enough compared to getting to use all the French and Benelux goodies (or SE Asia goodies in Japan's case).
I'll use the PoT for his 25% debuff on resistance, but I'm not even paying attention to the new manpower bonus they give. Maybe if I was playing a minor who was scrapping the barrel for manpower it might mean more to me.
I'd like to say that I agree with you, but I want to add a few things.
Except for minors, manpower is rarely a constraint
assuming you are not stuck in crappy laws. Yes, Britain and the US can get caught in a cycle of insufficient manpower until certain NFs and WT thresholds are reached. But that's not something we worry about at the same time we are thinking about occupying huge swaths of land (like the Axis).
For most major powers, equipment is the limiting factor, not manpower. We can debate the merits of this kind of gameplay, but for our purposes here, it's how the game runs at the moment. Even if you wanted to instantly build 1 million infantry in crappy infantry divisions that just have INF battalions, you need the infantry equipment to do it. I promise the limiting factor will be the equipment, not the manpower.
Once a country is at the point that they are occupying territory, the math for manpower boils down to a fairly simple metric: how much IC do I currently occupy
as a percentage of my total IC? If the answer is "30% of my IC is coming from occupied territory," then there is every reason to just eat the economic costs to further conscription rather than soften an occupation to gain manpower.
Service by Requirement costs you a 10% penalty to factory construction speed and a 10% penalty to factory output (while setting manpower to 10% and slowing training speed). But those penalties are more than offset if you are occupying enough IC to equal 20% of your total IC. So, even if you have to increase conscription to Service by Requirement to continue building troops while occupying enemy territory, you still win more than if you reduced your occupation policy to increase your manpower by some meager level. This also does not address the natural resource extraction. You get more resources by using harsher occupation. This might outweigh any silly considerations of manpower, especially for Japan.
Also note that occupation forces that suppress partisans are extremely cheap. Sure, you might need 250,000 CAV to occupy Western Europe and kill off all resistance, but 250,000 men
is a drop in the bucket compared to the IC and resources you get from France and Benelux at the harshest occupation. Even if you have to change your conscription law just to supply anti-partisan forces (and that won't ever be the reason you swap laws, I assure you), you still come out ahead.
And let's be clear: in a standard game, the Axis is in a race against the Allies mobilizing for war. Once the US throws off Isolation and the Great Depression, the Axis powers need all CIC and MIC they can find to continue the war. There is no situation I can think of for Germany, Italy, or Japan where even tripling the available manpower from occupied territories would in some way replace the need to use 100% of all resources and IC in occupied territory.
And then there's the historical angle. The last time I tested Germany, I could just about recruit enough manpower from France to create one SS division (which you can then name 33rd Waffen to make it feel historical). That's about how much manpower the historical Germans managed to recruit from France during the war (for frontline duty, which is what divisions represent in the game). So, if you triple the available manpower for game balance reasons, we run into the weird situation of seeing an absurd number of Frenchmen conscripted into the German army. Rinse and repeat with all other occupied countries.
