Manpower in 1.5

[Quantum_AI]

And there is a lot of middle ground in the game between mobilizing with low war support and mobilizing with high war support. 4-5 years is only applying to countries with low war support.

I know about war-support which is why my very next line was "It should maybe take a few months to a year max depending on war support."

War support gives +3% mobilization speed at 100% war support and -50% at 0% war support. I tested it as France when I had 92% war support, I was getting 0.009% per day. That means 0.27% per month or around 3.2% per year.

Assuming you start at "limited conscription" (and democracies cant go beyond that until the war starts), it would take 5+ years to get to all adults serve with MAX war support. And this is where this conversation started.

 

[Karaya 1]

^What he said.
Max War support basically just gets rid of your penalties, but doesnt provide enough of a bonus to Mobilization speed I would think.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Ok I did some math in my game, spending 150PP as Italy takes 9 months to move from 2.5% to 5%, rate .009 per day. War support was 76% more or less. Everyone else is seeing the .009% too. That means from 2.5%, it would take 2500 days to get to 25% scraping the barrel, 6.84 years.

My thoughts:
It should still take a long time, one year is far too fast, breaks immersion. No way you can impress 25 percent of your listed population in a 12 month span. The US mobilized quickly but not to “scraping the barrel” level.

On the other hand, Germany was struggling by 1944, and had boys and retirees on the line by April 1945, six years into the war.

...but they had lost most of their core territory by then so maybe the math is fine as is for a large centralized nation. Your total recruitable population would drop as core states fall behind enemy lines, might not be modeled in game though.

Where the slow mobilization hurts most seems to be small nations trying to punch like a big nation. How to balance that “boring small state game” against keeping the larger nations from having access to the magic manpower button again.

Ok I thought about it and I like the new system too much, way better than 150PP to rule them all system we had before now. Better to solve the edge cases. Don’t put the rate from 2.5 to 25 any faster than 3-4 years for the larger population players, I can support small population players get a bump for game play reasons.

My $0.02,
SR

 

[Thyriel]

Indeed the magic millions button was weird and I am happy it is gone. On the other hand, the present system is ridiculous. Whereas the penalties apply instantly, the benefits take years. So what are the persons who were conscripted doing in the meantime? The game just makes them disappear from one day to another. They are not in the army, but they evidently do not work either. I guess they are sitting at home and crying or just spending their time in the nearest pub and bordello to enjoy life before death... And they are doing that for years. This is not really much tied into reality.

Examples of the US are not really realistic. They could have conscripted more, but did not try to. Had there been a direct threat to the mainland you bet your sorry butt that US would have conscripted double the forces if not triple in the same time. An industrialised country has to be able to get most of the population up and running into an army within a year. Otherwise all wars would be lost by the defender.

Czechoslovakia in 1938 is a case in point. Majority of the conscripts were mobilised within weeks. If you want the scraping barrel option to take longer, fine, but even this should not take more than 2 years. Germany in 1939 did not go, "wait a second, I will be scrapping the barrel in 5 years so I better enact scraping the barrel conscription laws and screw my economy so I have people to fight in 1945". Rather laws were raised gradually and the new conscripts trickled in within a period of months as they were needed, not as they were available (at least not until much later when they started to run out of people). The problem was in the initial stages not the lack of people to fight or time to get them to the front, it was more the lack of equipment for them and the need to keep the economy going. HoI now makes each state ridiculously inefficient and incompetent in getting its population to the front.

 

[Sir Garnet]

Is t here a good explanation/rationalization of the mechanics here? It seems rather procrustean in its approach. Different countries have different army and reserve structures.

One extreme is the the well regulated Swiss militia that could and did mobilize in a few days. August 29, 3 days before Hitler invaded Poland, the Federal Council ordered general mobilization to enforce Swiss neutrality. The Swiss had 435,000 troops in the field prepared for invasion before the Allies declared war on Germany September 3.
That was 10% of the total population. Maximum mobilization was 850,000, about 20% of the population. There were, however, rotations and fluctuations in field strength over the war years as the threats on the borders evolved.

The French relied on mobilizing layers of more or less trained reservists of different ages over weeks and months.

The UK had few ready divisions and could mobilize its land strength only slowly.

 

[Shaka of Carthage]

Is t here a good explanation/rationalization of the mechanics here? It seems rather procrustean in its approach. Different countries have different army and reserve structures.

The fact that nations did have different approaches, yet we need a generic one to represent them all? So isn't it really a question of the number they are using for the mobilization rate? One I think we can mod in the define file.

 

[Edungeon]

I like the way it is right now

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Indeed the magic millions button was weird and I am happy it is gone. On the other hand, the present system is ridiculous. Whereas the penalties apply instantly, the benefits take years. So what are the persons who were conscripted doing in the meantime?

I can agree in the theory but I am not convinced it’s a good idea to swing too far back to quick manpower (for an attacker anyway). It was one of most immersion breaking parts of the game for me.

A rate of .018% or .03% per day might be more realistic speed than .009% but I really like the basic idea, the core, of phasing in the manpower. Heck it will even be cooler to phase in the penalty over the same number of days. Would that be cool?

Also what if there was a catch-up bonus speed for six months after you are drawn into a defensive war, even if already in another war... something like that, maybe a slower catch up bonus if threatened but not yet attacked. A short term PP discount to the next available conscription law, something.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I can agree in the theory but I am not convinced it’s a good idea to swing too far back to quick manpower (for an attacker anyway). It was one of most immersion breaking parts of the game for me.

Your immersion is not special or more important than other peoples' immersion. We're arguing on how the gameplay mechanics interact against 1) reality and especially 2) game context. The present implementation is degenerate, for reasons already outlined in this thread.

There is nothing wrong with phasing manpower so that players are asked to make choices in advance. There is something very wrong with self-inconsistent penalty (you seem to agree with this though) and timeframes with neither historical nor gameplay basis.

There's something awkward about the "choice" to store and spend more PP for more penalty while being conferred no benefit to making that early investment. Linear scaling of penalties isn't enough to split this difference. It is reasonable that more aggressive conscription law ramps up quickly, then gets slower as it approaches the cap. This gives you an actual reason to "plan ahead", rather than no benefit/penalty.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

There is something very wrong with self-inconsistent penalty (you seem to agree with this though) and timeframes with neither historical nor gameplay basis.

I agree with this 100%. Unfortunately I also like the idea that manpower phases in. I am hoping the feature gets fixed rather than reverted.

I don’t know what it would take. I am just throwing ideas out there. Maybe a base nine month phase in for any click regardless which law you choose, defenders and threatened get bonus speed, the Swiss get three weeks because they are Swiss, phase in the penalties at the same speed as the benefit... I don’t know what would work.

I have to be clear, I support the idea these clicks absolutely need to take much less time to get the benefit. I am completely convinced this will shorten drastically in 1.5.2, why I’m not arguing for shorter time. I assume this is going to be baked in already. “Now we are haggling about price.”

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Unfortunately I also like the idea that manpower phases in. I am hoping the feature gets fixed rather than reverted.

This isn't like EU 4 forts where they are mechanically broken and nearly guaranteed to remain so for years. There's nothing unsound about the basic process as implemented now (ramp-up is totally reasonable). We need number tweaks and maybe an extra conditional, not a new mechanic or rework.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Ahh, I’m slow.

Don’t complicate the messsge, got it. Just push for greatly shortening phase in, 6+ years sucks. I can get behind that.

 

[Admiral Piett]

Huh. I suspect this is why AI China in my game ran out of manpower by 1939. It isn't that they "ran out," it just isn't rolling in fast enough to keep pace with losses.

 

[Agenor]

For me the low manpower mobilization rate makes little countries no fun to play. It provides no challenge at all to me playing a big country (40 million population or more) where I don't really notice the difference, but it ruins little countries like Greece or Sweden. It takes over three years for manpower to rise by 7% in response to doing the focuses. It also makes no difference whatsoever to the speed whether you are at war or at peace, which makes no sense to me.

I wish I knew how to mod the speed, it needs to be much higher, especially in wartime. It didn't take Germany or Russia three years to mobilize.

Please Paradox, change this and make the small countries playable again.

 

[Eh up me duck]

The new manpower system is not only an inconvenience for gameplay, but is also very ahistorical. Nations can, and did, increase their manpower reserves very quickly in times of war.

Remember, available manpower is not how many men are trained and ready for combat, but how many are ready to be called up to arms. As such the old system was perfectly sufficient.

 

[VKW]

Would a simple fix not be to allow a decision for some amount of PP to greatly expedite the recruitment process for times of emergency?

 

[billcorr]

So that´s the problem! Thanks, really didn´t see it and now i´m feeling stupid lol

Hmmm...in situations like this, my perspective is that the game should inform the player.

It is never the player's fault.

More information to the player!

 

[Sir Garnet]

Let's not lose sight of the great historical truth that in most places and times troops with weapons who follow orders can go out and impress as many unarmed men as they can find into military service. The military situation and factors such as War Support and Stability certainly affect whether those orders will be followed, incidental casualties, and the level of political fallout - but men CAN be had quickly to throw into service.

This new system seems very bureaucratic, creating a blend of anxiety and boredom - like waiting years for a telephone, then more years for a dial tone, by then you are dead.

 

[Thyriel]

I agree, that the problem is rather an issue with the speed of the phasing in of manpower and that reversal would not be the solution. Speeding it up (here I am not in a position of knowledge to recommend any number), and potentially making it so that it is faster in the beginning and then slows down, would go looooong way to make it more manageable. Having the penalty develop in a corresponding manner, or maybe a bit faster, but tied to the manpower that already is made available, would make it all just perfect.

 

[seldon]

What's awful is if you go into something like "all adults serve". Do this from extensive conscription, and you will wait 4.5 years to hit 20%, and if you spend meaningful time out of war you take additional penalties.

The game could do with trickling a bit less slowly than that. Needing nearly half the game's meaningful timeline just to get the manpower available in addition to the egregious penalty starts to border false choice territory.

That's only true if you go directly from limited conscription to all adults serve. If you follow the more normal process of going up each conscription law, to minimize the penalties, it works out pretty reasonable. Limited (2.5) to extensive 5.0% 9 months. 5% to 10% 18 months and 10%-20% 36 months. Assuming that you shift to extensive sometime in 1939. That basically says you'll spend most of the war mobilizing manpower which seems perfectly realistic to me.