Is there too much manpower?

[kettyo]

@Sourlol

I think the only moment in history when this might have been true is when most of the big game was wiped out around the end of the last ice age and everyone had to try any possible new ideas like farming wild plants or herding smaller animals to avoid a mass death of famine.

 

[Th3master]

Yes, the main culprits being the 7% manpower for being fascist as a non-DLC minor (not really as much of a problem in MP since all the allowed nations in most games have trees) and the doctrines. I like the idea of the choice, but giving recruitable population just for research is silly. 5% is way too high and most agree it doesn't make a lot of sense. The biggest problem as of now is the spam of divisions which lags the game.

Here is my solution: make units require supplies that deduct from your total MIC depending on how much you need. Then allow units to be made as "Reserve" units that do not require as much supply and have them be offmap units that are deployed when the player/AI wishes or when war is declared. They can start off with low org and be unable to be trained past "Trained" while they are in reserve. Onmap units start as "Trained" and gradually experience to regular while deployed in peacetime, but cost more upkeep. This would prevent the AI from spamming units on the map (maybe only keeping 3-4 divisions on the map) while also allowing it to still have an army ready for an invasion. Countries with standing armies will have advantages over those with conscripts and reserves and vice versa.

Thoughts?

 

[Technoincubus]

With laws and ideologies you can get about 60-80% of manpower from population. This allows ANY minor to field ridiculous amount of divisions. Devs already fixed division spam but only to a certain margin, as it still is horrible, especially with exiled nations.

 

[halvorni]

(...) I think it should always be possible to theoretically do a world conquest with any nation in any Paradox game.

I beg to differ. Conquering the world as Luxembourg is ridiculous. Smaller nations should find their niche and do interesting stuff within their limits, but only majors should be able to conquer the world

If attrition caused some manpower losses I'd imagine manpower would work better.

Fully agree.

 

[Zwirbaum]

With laws and ideologies you can get about 60-80% of manpower from population. This allows ANY minor to field ridiculous amount of divisions. Devs already fixed division spam but only to a certain margin, as it still is horrible, especially with exiled nations.

Wat? At most you can get 40% IIRC

25% Scraping + 7% Generic Tree +5% Doctrine +3% Total Mobilization Manpower boost not on TM

 

[TurboTT]

I think a large problem for large amount of division is no equipment "upkeep" for troops, while stasionary. In hoi3 units used supplies and this meant that a nation cant field unlimited troops. This means after a while in the game Luxembourg can field 50 division!

 

[halvorni]

So, to give a definitive answer to the question posed in the thread title:

Yes.

 

[GPounda]

1 inf divisions is a 100000 soldiers on lowest estimates. Luxembourg had a 300000 population in HoIIV. Scraping the Barrel is 25% recruitment bonuse here and there and you have about 30% for said result of 100000.
This is the problem of HoIIV - devs wanteв to make minors able to field enough divisions to make a stand gagainst majors and this resulted in situation when smallest country in the world could field 100000 soldiers. Yugoslavia with 12 millions of core pop could field 650 20-width divisions (1000 manpower each brigade). By the late game world is swarming with minor armies.

My friend you have one to many zero's. A division is approximately 10,000 not 100,000 men!!!

 

[GPounda]

I've seen Canada with losses in the 4-600,000 range by 1941. Impressive since their population was only 12 million and at the height of the war we still had 1 million in uniform with most serving in the BCATP and RCN.

But I agree, it would be nice to see more of the population assigned to essential/support services and the army limited by supply. I suspect that will happen with the addition of fuel reserves in MtG's.

 

[fellaz007]

I really like that PDX researched the historic manpower levels and put them into their database, but...
this lead to complete unrealistic available manpower with ridiculous number of divisions available to all powers after some time (e.g. a vanilla and 1936 sized Hungary able to field more than 70 divisions, etc.).

My suggestion:

1. Keep the manpower levels, but add an agricultural tech level (like it was available in the former HOI versions). This will factor the available manpower according to the advance of the local agricultural output. This will especially reduce the available manpower of underdeveloped countries like India or China, because they would need to devout a greater slice of their pop to feeding instead of fighting compared to more developed countries. You can overcome this negative factor by advancing in according techs (e.g. tractors, farming machinery, land reform, fertilizer, etc.), or by rationing food (but this should lead to decreased NU after a while [see historic effects to the central powers in WWI]) or by exploiting conquered territory (but this should increase local resistance).
   • Historic facts: Improving the agricultural output between WWI and WWII was one of the reasons which allowed the German Army to increase the available manpower to unheard levels.
2. Introduce the national military administration as another factor that will drain available manpower. All powers had to use considerably administration overhead in order to organize, train, supply and move their armies. In order to add spice to this negative factor, each country should be able to tweak their military administration to serve their needs. Specializing into one of these areas should reduce the available manpower by an extra factor. Historic examples:
   • Germany could focus on an Ersatzheer system, which allows them to preserve unit XP from combat casualties, due to their complex R&R system. It took lengths to ensure that wounded service men returned to their former units and not to an anonymous replacement pool. Each division also had a replacement unit where new recruits were trained as a unit by their future NCOs and officers prior to their assignment to the front.This increased the moral of the replacement and the effectiveness of the refitted unit.
   • USSR could focus on a highly advanced reserve system, which decreases training time for new divisions during wartime. This would allow them to increase their army size quickly and efficiently in times of need.
     
   • USA could focus on a complex supply system which allows them to supply their troops fighting abroad via two oceans.

All in all these negative factors to the available manpower should be heavy enough to allow the historic division numbers to be fielded. But if you would want to increase these numbers, you need to make meaningful decisions with real consequences.

These are just me 2 cents.

 

[Fulmen]

I suspect that will happen with the addition of fuel reserves in MtG's.

Nah, fuel will just cull the plane spam, since reserving it for tanks will matter more, and make the naval war last at least a little longer (atm in PvP it's generally decided in a single doomstack vs doomstack battle). We'll still be seeing 80 division El Salvador.

 

[TurboTT]

Just add upkeep cost of equipment for all units, this will limit nations to have a maximum amount of troops.

 

[tazaaron]

PDX knows there's to much manpower, I doubt it will ever be fixed, it's all for gameplay... Do you want to play Canada with an Historical 10 divisions or a Canada with 50 divisions and aircraft carriers.

A mod will be the only fix here.

 

[James Hale]

Do you want to play Canada with an Historical 10 divisions or a Canada with 50 divisions and aircraft carriers.

10 divisions, please.

 

[Squared79]

I really like that PDX researched the historic manpower levels and put them into their database, but...
this lead to complete unrealistic available manpower with ridiculous number of divisions available to all powers after some time (e.g. a vanilla and 1936 sized Hungary able to field more than 70 divisions, etc.).

My suggestion:

1. Keep the manpower levels, but add an agricultural tech level (like it was available in the former HOI versions). This will factor the available manpower according to the advance of the local agricultural output. This will especially reduce the available manpower of underdeveloped countries like India or China, because they would need to devout a greater slice of their pop to feeding instead of fighting compared to more developed countries. You can overcome this negative factor by advancing in according techs (e.g. tractors, farming machinery, land reform, fertilizer, etc.), or by rationing food (but this should lead to decreased NU after a while [see historic effects to the central powers in WWI]) or by exploiting conquered territory (but this should increase local resistance).
   • Historic facts: Improving the agricultural output between WWI and WWII was one of the reasons which allowed the German Army to increase the available manpower to unheard levels.
2. Introduce the national military administration as another factor that will drain available manpower. All powers had to use considerably administration overhead in order to organize, train, supply and move their armies. In order to add spice to this negative factor, each country should be able to tweak their military administration to serve their needs. Specializing into one of these areas should reduce the available manpower by an extra factor. Historic examples:
   • Germany could focus on an Ersatzheer system, which allows them to preserve unit XP from combat casualties, due to their complex R&R system. It took lengths to ensure that wounded service men returned to their former units and not to an anonymous replacement pool. Each division also had a replacement unit where new recruits were trained as a unit by their future NCOs and officers prior to their assignment to the front.This increased the moral of the replacement and the effectiveness of the refitted unit.
   • USSR could focus on a highly advanced reserve system, which decreases training time for new divisions during wartime. This would allow them to increase their army size quickly and efficiently in times of need.
     
   • USA could focus on a complex supply system which allows them to supply their troops fighting abroad via two oceans.

All in all these negative factors to the available manpower should be heavy enough to allow the historic division numbers to be fielded. But if you would want to increase these numbers, you need to make meaningful decisions with real consequences.

These are just me 2 cents.

I really like these ideas. I would add one though, ammo. The more divisions you make the more you should need to devote MIC to making ammo, reducing the number of MIC for building more equipment.

 

[Iskulya]

Wat? At most you can get 40% IIRC

25% Scraping + 7% Generic Tree +5% Doctrine +3% Total Mobilization Manpower boost not on TM

You don't get a manpower boost from total mobilization. On the opposite, you get -3%. Taking total mobilization allows you to enact a decision if you have high enough stability, Women in the Workforce, to give you +3%, giving total mobilization manpower changes a net change of exactly..... zero.

 

[Zwirbaum]

You don't get a manpower boost from total mobilization. On the opposite, you get -3%. Taking total mobilization allows you to enact a decision if you have high enough stability, Women in the Workforce, to give you +3%, giving total mobilization manpower changes a net change of exactly..... zero.

I know, but you can enact the decision and flip to the war economy to still have the Women in the Workforce manpower boost while not having the manpower penalty from Total Mobilization.

 

[Iskulya]

I know, but you can enact the decision and flip to the war economy to still have the Women in the Workforce manpower boost while not having the manpower penalty from Total Mobilization.

I never knew that. Probably not something that was intended by the developers, good to know though. Hopefully that gets tweaked.

 

[GPounda]

Do you want to play Canada with an Historical 10 divisions or a Canada with 50 divisions and aircraft carriers.

10 divisions please

 

[Iskulya]

10 divisions please

Unfortunately this would be boring AF unless the game simulated smaller scale combat. As it is, this would get very boring, very quickly.