Manpower Calculation Enhancements

[unmerged(1207)]

I posted in the bug reporting section the errors I found in the manpower calculations (see Manpower Calculations in Error). This post is about the ideas I have for enhancing the manpower calculations.

My first enhancement ideas have to do with converting POPs into soldiers and how it effects manpower. Currently converting POPs into soldiers gives an immediate addition of manpower. The amount of the addition is determined by the formula:

Addition = Converted * (.25 + .75*Slider)

Where: Converted = Size of POP converted in 1000s.
Slider = Defense Spending Slider percentage setting (0-100%).

This free and immediate addition of manpower can be considered an exploit (see Manpower Exploit). If Paradox wants to remove this exploit they can simply change the formula to:

Addition = 0

If it is decided to keep the exploit, I suggest modifying the formula so that the addition doesn’t depend on the defense slider setting. The formula would then be:

Addition = Converted

I recommend doing this because any informed player will max-out the defense slider before converting thereby maximizing the manpower addition. Why not eliminate the hassle of doing this and give the maximum manpower addition regardless of the defense slider setting? Also, does the AI know how to do this? If not, this will eliminate a disadvantage for the AI.


My other enhancement ideas have to do with the issue I brought up in my post How Should Manpower Work. In that post I stated that manpower worked in two different ways. I called these two ways the “Traditional” and “Conscription” systems. I further stated that it be easy to fix the game so that manpower would work either way but not both ways simultaneously.

To have a pure “Traditional” manpower system, the manpower exploit needs to be removed as described above. To have a pure “Conscription” manpower system, the manpower calculation formula need to be changed to the following:

Manpower = Soldiers – Troops

Where: Soldiers = Total soldiers population in 1000s.
Troops = Amount of troops deployed.

With this system manpower only depends upon the numbers soldiers and troops. It doesn’t depend upon defense spending nor is there a manpower cap or rate of increase. The formulas for the manpower cap, increase and addition would be removed. Under this system only leadership would depend upon defense spending (as it currently does).

George

 

[Stonewall]

I've never bought into the theory that this was an exploit. I simply look at it as if the government decided to conscript soldiers. Those conscripts are the pops that got converted from laborers to soldiers. They should be available imediately.

 

[supergamelin]

No. When you convert a POP, manpower should not become available immediately. That should only increase the manpower limit of the country and the manpower increase. Right now, you can convert peasants into soldiers and have them reinforce units halfway accros the world the same day without even needing training. If you are caught in a war with your pants down that's bad for you, but just turning POP's into soldiers to get instant troops is not good. In the ACW it took half a year for the Union to get things going. Same thing for the British army in WWI. New army divisions did not take the field until 1915. That's a simple fix that would make the game much more realistic.

The reinforce to full strength button should also be reworked seriously.

 

[unmerged(1207)]

Stonewall and supergamelin thank you for you replies. Your disagreement illustrates nicely the issue I posed in “How Should Manpower Work?”. On one hand you have this elaborated system of defense spending, manpower caps and manpower growth rates. One the other hand you have a way to bypass all that and get free manpower immediately. Paradox, with our input, needs to decide how this should work and make the appropriate fixes.

George

 

[unmerged(14180)]

What are you in real life? how in hell did you come up with this? im impressed.

I agree with the poster that stated that manpower should be slow in being trained.

also, i also noted that Ships made manpower go down, how does this work?(in drongo talk for me )

 

[unmerged(1207)]

also, i also noted that Ships made manpower go down, how does this work?(in drongo talk for me )

Ships don't directly make manpower go down. This was changed in 1.02 when the manpower requirements for ships were removed. However, ships still affect the maximum manpower (i.e. manpower cap) and this affects manpower. If I remember right, each ship lowers the manpower cap by 2. I suspect that this was overlooked when the change was made.

I’ll give you an example of the impact of this. The manpower cap is very dependant upon the number of soldiers. At a 100% defense slider setting, 1,000 addition soldiers increases the manpower cap by 1. At the start of the game, manpower is negative and one needs to convert some POPs into soldiers to get positive manpower. Because ships are erroneously counted against the cap, one has to convert an extra 2,000 people for every ship. For many countries this is not big deal. But for some with big navies and small populations it has an impact. Take Sweden in the GC. It has 17 ships which means it has to convert an extra 34,000 people into soldiers.

George