How unrealistic is minor manpower in HOI3?

[21oliver]

I agree JJu which is why to make it more interesting i think we need more variety/randomness rather then hard coded decisions. We all find the game fun, but how can it truly ever be challenging if we know every move when and where its going to happen. If you want to get better at chess, how can you if i write down and show you my first 12 moves????

We have far too many people here who feel just because some things happened, it had to happen that way. So much of the war was simply on the spur of the moment or whim decisions it leaves the door open to many alternative possibilities.


Edit: France is a different case, they lost more for a variety of human error then a military disadvantage.


I have taken Nationalist Spain (with no reinforcements) and by 1940 or so, conquered Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Ireland, Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Turkey, Persia, Siam and i forget who else, all with the same units... i mean cmon lol

 

[jju_57]

I agree JJu which is why to make it more interesting i think we need more variety/randomness rather then hard coded decisions. We all find the game fun, but how can it truly ever be challenging if we know every move when and where its going to happen. If you want to get better at chess, how can you if i write down and show you my first 12 moves????

Having played competitive chess for a number of years we actually knew all the variants for many openings till the 10th and sometimes even 20th move. I know what you're saying but you had a bad analogy.

We have far too many people here who feel just because some things happened, it had to happen that way. So much of the war was simply on the spur of the moment or whim decisions it leaves the door open to many alternative possibilities.

As I replied above there are unhistoric putcomes that are possible and even probable, and then you have unhistoric outcomes that will never ever happen. Would Canada join the Axis? Would Australia? These are never would happen type changes. Could Germany have captured Moscow? I think the majority of people could honestly argue that it could have happened.

Now lets take one that I've seen some players argue for. They wanted Greece to hold off the Axis and actually conquer Bulgaria, Yougoslavia, Romania etc. The big if here is what does Germany do. The game will let Greece hold off the Italians if they fight alone or if the UK helps Greece while Germany doesn't help Italy. I've even seen the AI as Greece do this so I know a human Greece could do it. But if we add in 10 panzer divisions to the mix what should the outcome be? A loss for Greece. A human player as Greece has to expect the German AI to help Italy out. Yet they get upset that they can't have some Greek empire. It gets to plausibility here. Those wanting minor powers was things that are not plausible and many times impossible to even contemplate. They use gamey tricks like stacking troops at Melmo (Sweden access point form Denmark). A real Germany and not some dumb AI would sea invade and bypass this choke point. Or use Para's to attack from the rear.

So on one had gamey tricks are fine but on the other there is rage because the game tries to enforce the most plausible realistic results.


Edit: France is a different case, they lost more for a variety of human error then a military disadvantage.[/QUOTE]

 

[Kovax]

Some minors were manpower constrained, but MANY others had far more manpower than their weak industrial base could arm and supply. The game gives far too much IC to some of them, and far too little MP. In reality, those countries often fielded "militia" troops because it was the best way to substitute sheer manpower for better material. In the game, most minor countries don't do that because they run out of manpower first, even if they're building mostly "quality" units.

One prime example is Hungary. Historically, it hurredly fielded a number of new divisions with no heavy weapons, even some that were practically without rifles until those were manufactured later, and many with a severe shortage of machineguns (only 2-3 per company, in a few cases). There were more than enough volunteers to provide a significant fighting force, and the technology and engineering were sufficient to make significant improvements or drastic changes on licensed designs (such as the Toldi III light tank, the Zrinyi 100mm SPG, the Turan II medium tank refitted with a 75mm gun, or the Nimrod 40mm SPAA/AT), as well as create a few items of their own (Lehl tracked APC, designed and prototyped but never produced), but that was all but irrelevant due to the inability to build enough quantity to make a significant impact at the front. On the Russian front, the Hungarian army was considered "competent" by the German officers fighting alongside (with decent leadership and training compared to many other minors), but proved vulnerable to armored attack due to the acute shortage of AT weapons capable of stopping a T-34. In the game, they can produce AT weapons and artillery in quantity, as well as some tanks and aircraft, but can't add more than a few basic infantry divisions due to the severe manpower nerf. I'm not suggesting that they should be super-powerful, but the nerf is in the wrong place.

Obviously, the manpower nerfs for Czechoslovakia and Netherlands are ridiculous. Rather than use national unity, readiness, or some other mechanism to make sure that Germany can steamroll them as happened historically, but could be circumvented by a human player looking for a "what if" scenario, nerfing them makes it impossible for them to do what MIGHT have happened: Germany taking too long and giving France, UK, and other Allied countries enough time and/or conficence to intervene.

 

[Lothos]

Germany had roughly 65 million inhabitants in 1933,
82 million is today's figure

In 1937 Germany had
67,587,000 million population
32,992,000 where men

Of that between the agest of 20 and 49 there where
10,418,000

 

[Rommel41]

1. Bullet made by person in Lynn, Massachusetts.
2. Bullet loaded on Boston docks by longshoreman.
3. Bullet sailed across ocean by mariner.
4. Bullet unloaded at Normandy by CoE.
5. Bullet driven along "Red Ball Express" to Rheims, France by freight.
6. Bullet appropriated to correct forward dump by logistics command.
7. Bullet delivered to forward-divisional supply dump.

And now the bullet is part of the combat division.

That's seven people not even involved with the division.

So. 65k or 95k men in a division? No.

The USA just used so many more personnel for their complexed logistics.

 

[jju_57]

It would be great and a A+++ game if HOI got all the complexities correct. But just adding MP doesn't resolve the problem. If all you wanted to do is play a what-if game as some country then the simplist solution is to edit the saved gae file and add 10000MP or whatever amount you want. This takes all of 3 minutes to do. But to just add MP to eveyone's game will create more imbalance then exists today.

 

[Cybvep]

Actually, I hope that HOI4 will include a better MP system so that things like pilot training, limited number of specialist troops, recruits of varying quality etc. can be represented properly. It's too late for that in HOI3, but in HOI4 everything is possible...

Still, extensive changes can be done to MP even in HOI3 - just look at HPP. Same about other questionable design choices like multiple small arms techs for infantry, cavalry and militia. Mods can be very helpful here.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Even the annexation of Czechoslovakia is broken; GiE in both Allies and Commintern should be established, now it´s just gone forever

No, it's not. The GiE only appears if the country was captured in a war. Czechoslovakia is annexed "peacefully", thus no GiE. AFAIK, there was no GiE for them historically either, aside from few emigrates in London and Paris.

 

[KevinG]

Although countries like Belgium and Holland were speedbumps, a lot of that has to do with the fact that they didn't focus on military prewar and were overrun BEFORE they were able to mobilize. BEL and HOL each had more than twice the population than FIN in this time period but they have even less MP in this game. If you the player are able to mobilize them before the war, then they shouldn't be reduced to fielding their historical understrength 5 divisions or w/e it was they had.

In an alternate timeline, if Finland got hit with a competent surprise Soviet blitzkreig of nowhere before they were able to mobilize and got conquered in a week, Paradox would have lowered their MP to be less than BEL/HOL and nobody would care, because in this alternate timeline they couldn't field that many divs before they got conquered so seeing them with say 5 divisions wouldn't bother anyone. But this doesn't mean that the country wasn't capable of fielding more.

 

[21oliver]

The USA just used so many more personnel for their complexed logistics

They werent actually in a division, they were the average number of men used per division along with the actual fighting unit. AND they were part of the Manpower pool, they werent children or elderly, so realistically they need to be removed from the game, otherwise Major nations (especially those with large divisional slices) can build and unrealistic number of "combat divisions"... And all this does is widen the gap between the more advanced larger nations and the already heavily nerfed Minors.

Minors really do take a MP beating. they should instead have a quality nerf. Take Turkey for example. They had approx. 14 mil pop in WW2 thats roughly (25% or so) an available manpower pool of 3.5 million. Lets say you make Inf x3 brigades (3k per) or 9kper brigade. Try making in game (infantry not militia) nearly 400 infantry divisions. Im sure and underdeveloped nation militarily at the time had little support in the divisional slice so it likely was almost or all the combat unit. Most Major nations can make realistic or even higher numbers in game because they arent having support personnel removed from the available MP pool.

Edit: Belgium, lets not forget chose Neutrality, forcing the French to try and extend the Maginot. If the Belgian/Dutch had decided well in advance to be a part of the Allies, allowing for these troops to enter their nation and set up defenses things likely would have been different. Same result? maybe, probably but definitely different.

The thing is that the minors are nerfed so bad they simply arent playable often. And since the beginning of time no nation has ever had a problem fielding men. The quality of their training and equipment as well as leadership is the issue. A nation like Turkey again could easily mobilze and put units on the Russian Front as well as invade the Balkans. Now they may get wiped on both ends, but you as a player should have the ability to try it.

 

[Ikarases]

No, it's not. The GiE only appears if the country was captured in a war. Czechoslovakia is annexed "peacefully", thus no GiE. AFAIK, there was no GiE for them historically either, aside from few emigrates in London and Paris.

Hehe, funny... Please read some reference on the Internet before making yourself look dumb. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_occupation_of_Czechoslovakia

There were 2 GiEs, one in London (democratic) and one in Moscow (communist). Plus Czechoslovakia was more occupied than annexed, I´ve never seen a coutry which got annexed "peacefully", especially when it was building forts (which are still out there) against the "annexator" and had a quite different ideology. Even the title calls it "occupation" rather than "incorporation" or any other nonsense somebody might think...

I´m Czech and I think I know this part of history of my country better than you

 

[Secret Master]

First of all, let's all be honest with ourselves. HOI3 abstracts a ton of things that were very important in the period. The fact that there is 1 resources called "rares" instead of 20 or more rare non-interchangeable resources required to run IC. Nickel? Who needs nickel? I just need rares, so the Petsamo nickel mines in Finland are irrelevant beyond their production of something called "rares." Germany's ability to stockpile "rares" in mass quantities from just a few sources belies a much more complicated resource situation. (Tungsten only grants a bonus when present, not a penalty when you don't have it?)

Manpower is the same way. It's clear that manpower is not linked to population in any direct way. Brigades with the exact same number of troops have widely different manpower costs, so you can't say manpower has anything to do with demographics. Furthermore, IC does not use manpower. I've said it a thousand times: argue about IC-whoring all you want. It doesn't change the fact that the USA or Germany can both double their effective GDP in the time frame of a single game by building IC and spamming IC techs. And yet, not a single unit of manpower is used up. It's like the Terminator went back in time to Nazi Germany and said, "Hire me in a factory if you want to live." No one ever has to choose whether to put workers in factories or make people in to soldiers. Even Vic2 has a mobilization mechanic.

Furthermore, manpower is constantly generated. While there is a peace-time manpower rotation mechanic (which, at Volunteer Army, is pretty harsh), to be perfectly honest, manpower is kind of like resource stockpile. It accrues more of the resource (in this case, manpower) over time based on the provinces it is harvested from. You spend it when you build divisions, but note the difference. Real demographics might give you a range of persons you can conscript at a certain time. In HOI3, I can game conscription laws to "harvest" more manpower before the war. The number of people ages 18-39 is irrelevant. What matters is the base manpower of your provinces and the rate at which you harvest it. It may not seem like a lot, but consider how much more manpower the USA can "harvest" if it cheats or exploits the rules to allow for 3 year draft in 1936. (Note: USA issues with laws are one reason they get a manpower buff upon joining the war.)

While I can't speak for the Devs, my game-reviewer sense tells me that the game was designed originally around the concept of using manpower as the limiting factor, not IC. The reason is because limiting IC makes nations less fun to play by putting 99% of units out of reach. Instead, most minors can field small numbers of really nice infantry, special forces, some planes, tanks, and whatever else. In the old versions of the game, there was no LL, so all countries were "balanced" in such a way that they had enough IC to do interesting stuff, while having manpower limits so that Germany or another major under AI control could beat them easily. (Poland is the big one here, with so little manpower that it can barely mobilize existing units.)

If HOI3 gets another expansion, I will lobby for a rethinking of manpower because we have LL now. You could cut all IC in minors by 30%, but boost their manpower up. That way, they can say, "Hey, USA, we want to join the Allies. We have 400 manpower we can't spend because we have 5 IC a day. If you could donate 15 IC a day to us, we could really contribute to the war."

 

[Cybvep]

I´ve never seen a coutry which got annexed "peacefully"

Anschluss

Shots fired: 0
Soldiers lost: 0
Goals accomplished: full annexation of the entire country

 

[Ikarases]

Anschluss

Shots fired: 0
Soldiers lost: 0
Goals accomplished: full annexation of the entire country

I think you´re taking my words out of the context, we´re talking about Czechoslovakia. But OK...

Surely all Austrians agreed with the annexation! Hitler just taught that it would be a good idea to have again all of the German speaking population under one roof! (which never actually happened before). Many Austrians were imprisoned, just because they had left-wing taughts or that they were Judes.

 

[shierholzer]

Just let us include the female component.
Some countries used women pretty early in non frontline duties (UK was prime here, ATS/WAAF/etc), and some later (Germany eg).
We just reduce the seven guys in non frontline duty to two guys and five women.

 

[Rotten Venetic]

While I'm tempted to agree on minors manpower, I don't think that Turkey, or indeed any other nation, could ever field a quarter of its population all at once for more than a few weeks at best before starvation and economic collapse.
Not to mention that until a short time ago the ratio of children to adults was much, much higher, especially in Europe.

See Finland: http://cdn.counter-currents.com/wp-...Finnish-Population-Pyramids-1917-vs_-2006.jpg

See also the evolution of contemporary Turkey here: http://www.nationmaster.com/country/tu-turkey/Age-_distribution

The 1990 age chart gives us about 14.5% males between 15 and 50 and about 6.2% males between 20 and 39. The first one is a likely age bracket for recruits of a very desperate Turkey facing a war of annihilation, the second is a likely bracket for a Turkey just wanting to prepare a strong army without wrecking itself (technically it should be 18-39 which bumps it up - 1 out of the 13 millions of 1939 is a ballpark - there were even more children and less elders back then but one imagines it wouldn't have been that dissimilar to the 1990 age chart since Turkey's demographics are still in the process of becoming as aged as those of most developed nations).

So we've whittled your pool of 3.5 million to 1. With women and children taking over men's work, and provided there was NO significant strategic bombing against Turkey, this is about the high limit of how many soldiers Turkey could have put in the field without being certain to wreck its own economy. For Turkey I imagine this would translate into something like 70 divisions (vanilla brigade size makes divisions far too small - German and Romanian infantry divisions had IIRC 17500 men at full establishment).

A more economically sound army would be even smaller - let's say a nice round figure of 50 of them to keep some men behind in essential war industries and to account for those unable to serve in battle.

Then one has to account for the fact that Turkey is the remnant of a defeated empire which once won its territory with military conquest. They're not likely to be militaristic in the timeframe - that, if anything, means even less men to serve in the army per capita, compared to, say, Germany, which was fired up into an expansionist zeal by Nazi propaganda, or the Soviet Union, which fought for its very existance.

25% of the population on the frontline is almost unthinkable for any country. Even Japan had less than 10% of its population on the battlefields at any given time - less than 7% if we include Korea's population.


You're more likely to find 5-8 percent of a nation's population on the front with rifles than 25% in a serious war in the style of the early and middle XXth Century. This remains the case when a nation is slowly losing and desperate to put more soldiers into the fight as soon as possible. While the Volkssturm had a theoretical maximum strength in the high millions or low tens of millions, the reality is that only about 40,000 Volkssturm took part in the battle for Berlin.

On the other side, the Red Army had more than 34 million active personnel throughout the war but its strength at any given moment peaked well below the 10,000,000 mark. The Soviet Union's population at the time is a complex problem but with the higher natality of those times and the massive losses they suffered in both territory and actual deaths one assumes it went from just under 200 million before the war to about 125-150 million at its lowest point.

 

[Cybvep]

@Ikarases We were talking about "peaceful" annexations. Both Austria and Czechoslovakia were diplo-annexed, i.e. no shots were fired.

@Rotten Venetic What you described has nothing to do with manpower per se. It's about a relationship between IC and MP. IRL you needed people in the factories and on the fields in order to maintain the army, unless you got the stuff from somewhere else, e.g. from Lend Lease. In HOI3, there is no relationship between IC and MP except the cost you pay for supplies. Every nation enacts Total Economic Mobilisation and Service by Requirement, i.e. the harshest laws, right from the start. Also, even if you build 100000 IC, it won't cost you even 1 MP.

Nevertheless, in time of a real crisis various nations were able to mobilise vast number of men (the figures can be esp. high if we include militias) and it happened surprisingly quickly. You can even do that when you don't have much heavy industry, like Serbia did in WWI. The combat capacity suffers as a result, the economic and logistical effects can be disastrous (Serbia often lacked artillery shells and ammunition) and the cost in bodies is usually high (most of the Serbia's male population died during WWI), but it can be done.

 

[21oliver]

Rotten - pardon me, im not always clear im talking more extreme circumstances. More advanced nations tend also to rely more on technology and less on MP as opposed to less quality Military nations. The point essentially is that they clearly could raise more then they are able without the player doing some fancy maneuvering. And nations like Czechoslovakia clearly could mobilize their divisions, unlike in the game. It is almost impossible to have accurate implementation of the make ups of the Armies of the world at that time, as each had their own issues and did things differently, and were under different circumstances. And also all units were definitely not uniform as neatly as we have it in game So as in all games, we must generalize and standardize, the question is to what degree. Another issue that sticks in my craw is backwards military nations like Persia, whom have had Cavalry for Centuries, have to train to form a Cavalry unit? At that time they were likely mounted infantry with WW1 equipment. They didnt do Napoleonic charges. Something like that is just another "lets stick it to the minors" jab.

Secret - If i was Paradox as i have stated a few times i would have 1) abstracted some things more, like MP and resources. and 2) not forced historical hard coded decisions upon the players. Because the way they have set up the game you expect more historical accuracy as they have established the environment. They can no longer fall back on "Its a generic Military game representing the flavor of the period surrounding WW2". They have essentially said this is a WW2 simulation, hence they set themselves up for all kinds of drama.

And your right on the money with your points. So many things are left out or have no significance....MP/Other resources/Food/the value of certain minors or cities (Ploesti?). The game will never be an accurate reflection of the War regardless if when you play the Soviets beat the Germans and the US beats the Japanese. The score of the game may look the same but the actual match is unrecognizable.

Hence i say mod what you dont like and play it as a wargame and dont think of it as a WW2 sim. Ive had a hankering to mod the game myself and had a variety of ideas but in the end the AI is still the AI and to be honest the Diplo triangle is what throws me off, i personally dont like the triangle (the threat system, with some changes is good).

 

[21oliver]

ANother thing, lendlease is great but set up poorly. Forget the fact that they give you way too much (As Canada ive received 30+ IC from France as they were being invaded). But the items should be built in the nation thats supplying them, As the whole point is you dont have the Industrial Capabaility (Ive had Canada go from like 13 IC to 190 IC through lend lease!), and if the nation gets overrun (see France) you should lose the item.

Also licensing needs some work. It should be for hardware not units, thats not licensing but Military attaches and advisors in your nation assisting you. And no way if German advisors come to Bulgaria and teach me how to make a Infantry Brigade should i get all the tech and doctrine equivalents that the Germans have.

As one who plays lots of minors, i take advantage of all of this, but i believe in being fair, it really is out of whack.

Edit: Sorry for the double post!

 

[shierholzer]

Also licensing needs some work. It should be for hardware not units, thats not licensing but Military attaches and advisors in your nation assisting you. And no way if German advisors come to Bulgaria and teach me how to make a Infantry Brigade should i get all the tech and doctrine equivalents that the Germans have.

Licensing is a whole other thing.
There were three types of this:
(1) Buying foreign equipment.
(2) Buying the license to produce foreign equipment yourself.
(3) Get foreign advisers to train your guys.
HoI3 licensing was (2) before TFH, and is (2)&(3) with TFH, a function to buy the IC along the license doesn't exist (Most of Japans capitals were built somewhere else).