How unrealistic is minor manpower in HOI3?

[Rotten Venetic]

I thought this was a thread about minors, here you are discussing the USA.

...And BarrosRodrigues' Portugal, that's a major too

 

[21oliver]

Thx Nim....based on that statement its basically what i said, they hedge their bets, they want the best of both but dont want to be held accountable. As one who has been wargaming for nearly 40 years and who spent many years in WW2 game design the only things that resemble WW2 IMO are the names of the individuals and the units. Other then that its a very nice wargame with imo a cool combat resolution system.

Rotten - these threads invariably turn out like this. It is a hot topic and sore spot for many posters here. Its two sides of a coin, you cant talk about whether Minors MP is nerfed without discussing invariably Majors and their MP, and then how it all winds together.

If you want to play a WW2 that's historical, start in 1939, but don't bet your life savings that everything will always turn out the same way as it happened in RL

lol pretty good. If you want to make money ill give you a tip on a cant miss stock. Just dont blame me if you lose your money...

 

[DaveyDave]

Yes, minor manpower is amped up, to make the game more of a challenge for majors and more fun for players playing minors. So what? Thread about manpower for minors - then you have to talk about the manpower concept in the game. I have data for the the US, not for Haiti, with which I can support some concepts and question others.

 

[21oliver]

Dave - you have it backwards. Most common "playable" Minors (such as Turkey, Baltic states etc...) have MP thats too LOW, not high, hence they arent playable, and less of a challenge for Majors. Thats what all the threads have been about these past few years. Take Czechoslovakia, perhaps the only non Axis nation that was basically prepared for war in the late 30s and in the game, they cant even mobilize to fill their existing units! I did the math for Turkey once theyre way low.

Even if MP isnt properly represented in the game, if AT LEAST the various nations maintained the PROPER ratio of MP between them, we would have a more accurate reflection of the times. Also consider how Germany basically adds 1000+ Manpower through Decisions (when in reality they didnt add anywhere near that much through those decisions).

Compare Turkey and Bulgaria. Bulgaria had roughly 43% of Turkeys population pre-war and yet have 78% as much MP. Poor Turks.

The game is not challenging for majors. If you cant basically conquer it all as any major (France and Italy perhaps excluded) your doing something wrong. Unless if you hammer yourself with house rules, the AI cannot match a good player. As soon as TFH came out with all the nifty eye candy like landing craft, the first thing i did was conquer the US as the UK using nothing but Infx3 and TPs...

I have long since given up any false reality of this being a representation of WW2, in fact i would at this point prefer it go more sandbox, eliminate all illusions of historical accuracy and simply improve the quality of play.

 

[Cybvep]

21oliver, I don't know about the others, but for me, your rant is becoming extremely annoying. You are writing the same things in every thread over and over again, no matter what the topic. You are a bit like those trolls who post links to porn sites or want to sell us some s*it, only that you are talking about random AI, lack of challenge and not playing PI's games instead. It's even worse when you complain about these things, but refuse to play on any other difficulty than Normal, saying that the game would become unrealistic/ahistorical, even though you admit that even the base values are not historical. I'm not saying that you are always wrong, but your posts are hardly bearable for me. Sorry, I had to say this. I hope that you will stick to the topic, otherwise I will be tempted to use the ignore option (you would be the second person on the list, Andropov being the first one). Hope you don't mind, I heard that it's not easy to offend you, heh.

 

[21oliver]

Ok simply because this topic gets me fired up a bit i quickly tossed together some numbers for comparison (off the net, rounded and 1936 start date MP). Now we know, WE KNOW the data within the game is not historically accurate and thats ok unless we read that the game is a historical game (above clarification added by Nim). We all believe or would prefer to believe that MP is some modified form of MP with other elements then to believe Paradox simply didnt get it right. Unfortunately in game it simply states manpower is able bodied men available for service essentially with no hints that any modifiers or abstractions are attached.

Just for conversation sake lets compare similar nations.

First off we have Italy, the more modern nation and yet not so much that they would be confused with the US or Germany, and some not too distant similar nations (Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria). Not typically speaking, while comparing nations over various years using the Cia World Factbook, similar populations USUALLY have similar Manpower pools available for their military. So barring some weird flux in birth rates (which did happen interwar with France) well assume the data should be "close". Now as no other drains exist in HOI3 (Industry etc..) on Manpower, we are specifically talking about MP for the military so lets leave it at that and just look at the raw data for a minute;

Italy in game (1936) with all units deleted had a MP Pool of 1120, around 35/36 they had a population of about 43 million. The other nations in game/pop are;

Turkey 207 / 16 mil
Greece 154 / 7 mil
Bulgaria 143 / 6 mil

So comparing just the Baltic nations first, Turkey which had a min of 2x the pop of either Greece or Bulgaria, only have about 25% more MP...

Italy which had less then 3x the Pop of Turkey has 5x the MP of them.

Just for an example, lets use Turkey as the accurate MP totals and modify the other nations to what they "should" be, if the ingame manpower was based on historical data, unmodified by other factors....

Italy = 556 MP
Turkey = 206 MP
Greece = 91 MP
Bulgaria = 78 MP

or if you used Italy as the baseline, the others would go up. But this is keeping the ratio of available MP in line between nations.

Things that make you go hmmmmmm....


PS. Sorry for the double post!

Cyb im not offended, im trying to stay as ontopic as everyone else. Hell i put these arguments away until they get brought up again. I have no illusions in this being a historical game, its just if its presented as one its sort of an insult. And btw i have played recently some very hard games, and honestly theyre no different. The game isnt harder, you just have to watch your resources. If your not playing Germany or the SOviets and IC whoring, the game is almost no different at all. Well im sorry you got upset i dont know how else you would respond to threads like this, i try and be clear and concise and quantify my replies so they arent misconstrued.

 

[DaveyDave]

Okay let me share with you a little bit of my rusty historical "knowledge" (it can be looked up and verified).

Simply comparing population to MP isn't valid. Some nations in 1936 had already effectively mobilized their populations and could NOT mobilize anymore. In the game this would be represented by a low MP pool and a relatively high brigade count (compared to population). In other situations / countries, populations can't simply be translated into mobilizable power, - so population would not be a particularly relevant figure there. A country like Italy compared to Turkey would be able to mobilize more of its population, for example, because it had modern industry relatively speaking, and would't have to retain so many workers in the fields to feed the rest of the population and the army. Italy, by the way, was one of the countries that had a nearly fully mobilized population in 1936 already : it benefitted the Mussolini regime to solve the unemployment problem with compulsory military service.

Simply deleting all units and saying "hey, some nations are getting cheated!" (sorry, that's what it looks like you're doing here) is really cheating yourself out of the study of the complexity of this issue. Among the variables you could study are : % of population mobilized in 1936 historically, total number of troops mobilized in each country 1936 to 1945/48, maximum size of the armed forces of each country during the period (gives you some idea of the limits they could support). Turkey may have had a relatively small army, and, also, a relatively small proportion of population that could have been meaningfully mobilized (this is a bad combination in warlike times). I don't know.

Not all nations had the same proportion of their population militarized in 1936, and nations -especially minors- were highly asymmetric on the capacity to mobilize population, this was dependent on many factors some of which aren't even economic.

So the bottom line is that you may have a point, but far more systematic work needs to be done in analyzing the historical data.

 

[21oliver]

I know the complexities of the topic, read up a few and i keep saying you cant simply create a formula and plug everyone in, all nations are different, and in alot of areas. But we go by what we have available. Forget active troops, just talk population. Traditionally nations of similar pops have a similar manpower pool, whether they are active or not is not the issue, just how many men they can draw on in the utmost emergency. I made the distinction of Italy being more modern then the rest, just not as much as say westernized nations. By deleting the units and reverting them back into manpower, it may not be an exact science, but it is obvious that something is off, and the data is not historically accurate. If its not supposed to be then thats a whole other issue. Compare Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece who werent all that different back then and look at the numbers, Turkey gets jibbed. Look at Czechoslovakia, one of the few nations that had been gearing up for war and they cant even mobilize to fill their existing units much less make new ones. A simple case of Paradox not wanting them to survive, so Germany can get all its MP from the Decisions and Events.

 

[Beagá]

Hope you don't mind, I heard that it's not easy to offend you, heh.

IMO the thing is, like in CORE for AOD, mobilization events (and certain events, like refusal of Munich agreement) should ALWAYS give MP. Instead, what we get in HOI 3 is only faster MP growth. That´s not realistic. Due to the sandbox and allergy to events, we have this current situation with minors.

The fact labor and IC is too abstracted doesn´t help either. We´ll have to wait for the next HOI for an overhaul of mobilization and industrial model.

 

[Cybvep]

The fact labor and IC is too abstracted doesn´t help either. We´ll have to wait for the next HOI for an overhaul of mobilization and industrial model.

Assuming that it will be changed at all. There were few changes to the economic system in HOI3. The most important ones were the replacement of gearing bonus with practicals, the introduction of laws (in HOI2 we had peacetime IC mod, so laws kinda replaced that) and the new "reserves" system (which unbalanced the game and generally created more problems that it solved; BTW I cannot believe that after all these years the Volunteer Army exploit still works). If HOI4 follows a similar path (and judging by the design philosophy adopted by the devs in EUIV, i.e. their most recent game, I think that it's likely), I don't think that we will see many changes here. Air combat will probably be overhauled in order to reduce micromanagement and solve balance problems with stacking penalties, naval combat will most likely be at least adjusted in order to represent submarines in a more realistic way, but the economic system... I don't know, the devs may be afraid of new balance problems and decide that the current system is "good enough". Of course, it's all speculation on my part, but it seems that after HOI3 the devs adopted a conservative approach to their new games.

 

[jju_57]

Unfortunately in game it simply states manpower is able bodied men available for service essentially with no hints that any modifiers or abstractions are attached.

What the F do you want? A legal document 50 pages long detailing excatly what MP is and isn't. This is your biggest red herring argument yet. PI has said NUMEROUS times that MP is an abstraction. Get over it already.

Here's a news flash for you guys. MP is abstracted. Industry is abstracted. Divisions are abstracted. Combat is abstracted. Supply is abstracted. Diplomacy is abstracted. Intelligence is abstracted. Research is abstracted. See a pattern here? The whole entire game and every single mod ever made all is abstracted.

For every single person whinning about MP I notice that they never complain that their division is just as powerful as every other countries division. Here is a guarantee. MP will no longer be abstracted when the game has unique combat units based on each countries ability to field, train, equaip, lead and supply their divisions. We also need to factor in each countries personality and how their population were as actual soldiers. After all some countries had a tendacy to drop their rifes and run at the first shot.

 

[21oliver]

PI has said NUMEROUS times that MP is an abstraction

We know it has to be an abstraction, the fact is PI has never said its an abstraction. In fact i have quoted and in the past placed screenshots of the MP definition, in game and it clearly doesnt mention any modifiers or abstractions, we ASSUME that to be the case, because the numbers just dont add up. I personally dont want anything, and im not leading the charge, just presenting the info here now that its brought up. If you would take the time to read my posts instead of just reading my name in the thread, you will see clearly i continously explain all this. Paradox hasnt made a stand yet, they want to act like the game is historical, but we shouldnt get upset when things dont go historically.

I have no issues at all with this, i regardless of what Paradox states simply believe this to be a sandbox game with names and pictures of people and units of WW2, i have no expectations of the game representing anything remotely close to the events and circumstances of the War other then the forced hard coded events.

This is the definition of Manpower as it is stated in game when you hover over the symbol, as stated by Paradox;

MP represents males of military age ready and available to form drafts for your armies. These can be used to either raise new units or bring existing ones back up to strength

Now maybe you see it and can point it out to me but i clearly dont see anything that states there are any modifiers or abstractions to the data so that historical numbers become unbalanced between nations. No need to get upset, simply provide the documentation, thats what i do.

After all some countries had a tendacy to drop their rifes and run at the first shot.

I agree with this and if you read my posts youll see i clearly state the complexities of the this whole argument, and make similar statements as yours in relation to the individuality of various nations. But the Manpower pool of a nation is a finite unmodifiable data figure and thats the end of it. Its like asking you how many people in your family, there is one answer, thats it, it doesnt change based on circumstances. The Manpower pool of a nation is simply ready and able bodied men, generally between 18-45 fit for combat, and it usually is between about 18-25% of a nation historically. This number doesnt change regardless of your Govt, its Politics, the Leaders, the Laws etc... This is perhaps the easiest single thing to determine if your going the historical route in a wargame.

Of course Manpower is abstracted, this is no relevation. Just get Paradox to say so and all these threads will go away.

If you want to play a WW2 that's historical, start in 1939, but don't bet your life savings that everything will always turn out the same way as it happened in RL

How can it be remotely historical when the data at the start is incorrect?

 

[shierholzer]

How can it be remotely historical when the data at the start is incorrect?

PI games are never programmed to be perfectly historical. If you wan't to replay WW2, buy some good books about it.
If you start a new 1939 game with Haiti, and watch, there will be a fairly historical outcome.

 

[tommylotto]

21oliver, you need to get into modding. Stop complaining that the game is not just how you want it to be, and try to make it so. If Turkey lacks manpower, write an event that gives them a MP boost upon going to war. That would be an easy event to write. You can also redo all of the OOB's like I did to match your vision of historical reality. PI gives you tons of tools and it can be fun.

 

[jju_57]

This is the definition of Manpower as it is stated in game when you hover over the symbol, as stated by Paradox;

Now maybe you see it and can point it out to me but i clearly dont see anything that states there are any modifiers or abstractions to the data so that historical numbers become unbalanced between nations. No need to get upset, simply provide the documentation, thats what i do.

On these very forums Podcat has said that MP is abstracted. You only look at what the game says. But the forums are here to help explain the game and is wa sin the forums that MP abstraction was mentioned.

Now I could search for the exact post but why waste the time? Even if I linked a post in the forums you would ignore that and refer back to the in game tooltip.

Finally, for arguement's sake what would you say or do differenlty if by some miracle PI changed the tooltip in the game to add the phrase "MP is abstracted to represent able bodied men....."? I mean if they did that would you then all of a sudden not mention MP? Would those complaining about MP then not mention it anymore? If stupid little Portugal can defeat the US then what is the issue here?

 

[21oliver]

First off i didnt know Podcat ever stated that MP was abstracted. If so then thats in conflict with what it says in game. Again read my previous posts here...if that is indeed the case and it was confirmed by Paradox or changed in game as you stated i would never again argue about Manpower being off. Why? Because the game would then not be a true historical simulation based on data but rather just a sandboxy wargame with some WW2 elements included. I posted all this several times in this thread. However that being said, IF Paradox would then claim that the game was historical, i would argue against it.

Portugal beating the US has to do with the AI not the MP issues. I have said all along that most of the things players WANT in future versions are really just eye candy or cool things that ultimately wont change the outcome of our individual games but just give us something different to do. Ive conquered the US with various minors. This game is about 1) VPs 2) Supply 3) Org everything else is interchangeable. Guys discuss building special units for crossing rivers....I conquer the world with Infx3 and TPs. So the issues dealing with the results of our games we all know to be the AI.

Give me some credit JJ i dont just rant and rave i try to clearly articulate my argument and back it up with evidence. It doesnt mean im right but i believe its the right way to do it rather then just to flame posts. If i had ever read that Paradox stated Manpower was abstracted in game i never would have made a single post arguing about it.

I do find it interesting that in all these heated discussions over MP and whether nations have been nerfed or not we never hear from the Modders, many whom we all respect very much. Last i recall when i was playing the various mods all of them modified most minors MP.

Tommy - Im not complaining how the game is or isnt what i want it to be. The topic at the moment was whether the MP data is based on historical accuracy or not, whether it was some modified abstracted totals. The whole game practically is moddable, that wasnt the issue. And personally none of it really matters because the AI is poor and simply cannot match humans.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

Portugal conquering the world in TFH 4.02 is a bit absurd, no?

That is not a TFH issue because I already had done that with FTM. Actually with TFH it is harder to achieve WC because the AI is now less passive (it DOWs neutral warmongers), is able to effectively use UR (underground resistance) and with the new AP (armor piercing) concept an all-infantry army (that I used in FTM) is much weaker now. I just never had the time to write an AAR.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

I thought this was a thread about minors, here you are discussing the USA.

...And BarrosRodrigues' Portugal, that's a major too

Thanks that made me laugh!

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

If stupid little Portugal can defeat the US then what is the issue here?

Whatever your issue is there is no need to insult the Portuguese. BTW Portugal may now be a "little" country but there was a time in History when the Portuguese and Spanish split the World amongst them.
Treaty of Tordesillas

 

[DaveyDave]

Incidentally Barros, I love your AAR, hope you don't mind it's in my sig

"God gave the Portuguese a small country, but an entire world in which to die."