how to increase manpower faster

[unmerged(186525)]

How do you increase the conversion ratio to freemen, so that I can increase my manpower levels faster? I find in my first games in Vic Victus, I have a chronic shortage of manpower that I don't know how to deal with. How do I avoid this and ensure adequate manpower levels?

At this rate, it will take indefinitely for me to gain enough manpower so that I can expand. What do I do?

 

[RHKINC]

Really a national idea is one of the best ways. Otherwise its a waiting game and choosing the right event options. If you civilize enough you can colonize more provinces which = more manpower. Also, some nations (like the British tribes) are nearly impossible to play with. What nation are you playing as?

 

[Comontorios]

If you have enough money you could always use mercenaries.

 

[Borne2Run]

Purchase mercs to conquer, convert the people, --> manpower.

Mercs also aren't recruited from manpower.

 

[Wave]

If you have less than 10 provinces I wouldn't advice using mercenaries because they're darn expensive to buy and maintain so they are good for patching up beaten units but small countries can't really afford to pay 20-30 ducats for one mecenary cavalry and 10 for one heavy infantry. And thus making big armies out of them may not be the best idea, unless you have something like 10 ducats per month income.

 

[Cheexsta]

Although, mercenaries are cheaper when you have fewer units of them. The more you train, the more expensive they become; IIRC their starting cost is only a bit more expensive than regular units. Their maintenance cost is double that of regular units, but maintenance costs are dirt cheap to begin with...

A few units of merc heavy infantry really helps take the main brunt of an enemy attack, even for a small country.

 

[fmurciap]

Increasing manpower=increasing freemen

As the title says, manpower is a function of your freemen population (in fact freemen on provinces of your own culture-culture group, the others don't count)
So you need that a lot of slaves become freemen (beware, it will affect your income) but not a lot of freemen become citizens (beware, this will affect your research)
The quickest way, as you wait for cultural conversion, is having (getting) the National Idea of Emancipation (in 10 years 7% of your slaves become freemen) and not Citizenship (or in the same time 7% of freemen will become citizens, so depleting your manpower pool). Keep on spankig the barbarians now and then to get a steady flow of slaves into your markets, as money can be a real issue, almost as important as manpower, in the early game.
Later on you will have the oportunity of enacting a law that gives an aditional 2% flow of slaves to freemen. There can be even a law that gives a drop of 2% in the rate of freemen becoming citizens.
Remember the cultural issue: don't expand too much except in regions of your same culture-culture group, use high charisma governors to speed up conversion, etc.