Manpower - Industry - War

[AzJeff]

Ok.
So I am playing a GC as Prussia, it is 1864 or so and I know the Austrian-Prussian War event is coming up and am having problems preparing for it.
First, some background:
- as everyone always suggests, I set Defense and Army maintenance to minimum at the beginning of the game. Of course, this resulted in all of my on-map divisions to be reduced to 1900-2200 men each (from their full-strength 10k-12k).
- Prussia is #1 in prestige and industry, tech research has gone well and all of Prussia is covered with rails.
- Prussia was able to handle the war with Denmark/Holstein with it's depleted divisions, but saw that I would be hurting if I didn't do something about the army situation.....
- around 1856, I was able to afford to have education, army maint and defense spening on full while still making a profit. Thru this alone I was able to go from -100 to +40 manpower and reinforce some of the depleted divisions.
- By converting all unemployed POPs (mostly clerks) to soldiers, I got another ~100 manpower, but still have about 15 divisions still at their depleted strength.

It now looks to me like I am going to have convert more POPs to soldiers in order to shore up the depleted divisions.

So I guess the question is: Is there no way to wage war and keep your industy running at peak strength?
If so, is it more preferable to convert farmers/labourers to soldiers over any other POP? Now that I think about it, I am running excess in the grain RGO's so maybe some farmers will find themselves practicing drills....

I really don't want to have to convert employed POPs to soldiers - it seems to me that my factory/RGO output will go down, my daily profit will go down as a result, and I will then be running negative getting ready for a war that I may not even win - Austria, in the meantime is fielding dozens of full-strength 10k+ divisions, having just finished a war with Russia - I don't expect it to change much by 1866).
Then, I will have to face France in 1871, and France kicks a$$ whenever it goes to war......

Any advice is appreciated!

 

[unmerged(16875)]

Never convert clerks. You lose research that way...always convert the farmer/laborers. And I think you raised army maint. prematurely...defense spending will grow your manpower, and you can reinforce to full strength instantly after cranking maintenance up...to have full maint. at peace is wasted money, IMHO.

 

[egross]

Never convert clerks. You lose research that way...always convert the farmer/laborers. And I think you raised army maint. prematurely...defense spending will grow your manpower, and you can reinforce to full strength instantly after cranking maintenance up...to have full maint. at peace is wasted money, IMHO.

What he said. Farmers = cannon fodder throughout history. Never convert clerks unless it's to officers, and then only under dire circumstances -- and convert hem back once the war's over.

Defense spending grows manpower, not maintenance.

Also: NEVER keep a standing army of more than a hadfull of divisions unless absolutely necessary. Instead, you should build your mobilization pool and keep divisions demobilized until you need them. Building your mobilization pool will take money, canned goods and small arms, but once in the pool they're always there and don't cost maintenance unless you demobilize and deploy them. They do take time to become operational once called up -- a couple of months -- and for small countries with numerically large enemies this may present a problem, but normally you watch for when your neighbors mobilize and this gives you warning.

Also, once you demobilize a unit and it goes back into the pool, when you call it up again it appears magically at full strength. So, you don't have to keep divisions in active duty, paying maintenance and rebuilding depleted units with manpower. Much, much better.

 

[Darkrenown]

I wouldn't say never keep a standing army. I like to keep a fairly large one, but keep maint down when I am not at war. Reserves are fine for fleshing out an army, but the core should be professional soldiers.

Jrb: With defence at full you must be gaining 5-15 MP a month, over the next year you could reinforce all your divisions without convertig anymore pops, but go ahead and convert those grain farmers if you want to speed things up.

 

[AzJeff]

Luckily, I've got a save game from 1862 I can go back to.....
The reason I had maintenance at full was because I had a mixture of full-strength and depleted divisions on-map and didn't want those full-strength divisions to "devolve".

If I now set maintenance to min, and those full-strength divisions go to 1900 men, will the lost strength of those divisions go to the manpower pool?

I was under the impression that the divisions you get from the mobilization function were Reserves? I want to reinforce my already existing Regular divisions.

Darkrenown - nope, with Defense at full, the most I've gotten is .5 per month - it may have inched up to .8 a couple times.
It took 6-8 years to go from -100 to +59 manpower.....
That's why I'm kinda frustrated with how "hard" it is to wage war in this game - the AI seems to have hordes of troops, but I don't (then again, Prussia is #1 prestige and industry- different priorities, I guess).

 

[unmerged(6909)]

Convert big (farmer) pops....not those small clerk pops. Converting clerks to soldiers is among the worst you can do (reasons already mentioned above).
Like said above: Convert those useless farmers (max defence spending before converting)....otherwise farmers are just useful when you're a democracy and want a conservative party to win the election imo
That's all.
A 80K farmer pop will do wonders for your MP

In answer to your question: when you cut down army maintenance you will loose the MP you've invested in your divisions....but there isn't a problem since you've a lot of farmers which will give you more MP than you can use.
Convert them a few months before the war starts....Every month before is a waste of money.

EDIT: big soldier pops will give you much MP, small pops will give you nearly nothing.

 

[Jadelith]

never EVER convert clerksmen.

ALWAYS convert farmers and laborers.

i used to have no farmers nor laborers in my countries,,,,, in 1.01

however, in 1.02, you HAVE to have laborers and farmers, lest you run out of resources to supply your factories

happened to me while playing as russia. had 12k industrial power, and almost no laborers whatsoever. then, i realized that i was using all of the sulphur in the world market so, i started converting craftsmen into laborers

 

[unmerged(15665)]

There is an easy way to rebuild your regular divisions in preparation for war. Build up your mobilization pool to at least 20 or so divisions. Crank up your army maintenance and defense spending to maximum. Advance one day, and then mobilize. Suddenly you will have enough manpower to reinforce every standing division BEFORE your reserves are ready. Personally I think its an exploit, but apparently the AI does it too.

 

[Darkrenown]

Darkrenown - nope, with Defense at full, the most I've gotten is .5 per month - it may have inched up to .8 a couple times.
It took 6-8 years to go from -100 to +59 manpower.....

Woah, you can't have many soldiers. I started up a quick game as prussia, set defence to max convered my 4 largest farmer pops (99k,99k,39k, 39k) to soldiers and found I had 59 manpower and a gain of 2.5 per month. Note it's the number of people, not the number of pops that affect how much manpower (and leadership) you get, so large pops are better.

Edit: When converting pops make sure your defence spending is at max, even if only while you convert.

 

[Winkelried]

Edit: When converting pops make sure your defence spending is at max, even if only while you convert.

Why? o

 

[unmerged(14689)]

Why? o

You get maximum added manpower.

 

[Winkelried]

You get maximum added manpower.

And if you don't do it the opportunity will be lost? Isn't it enough to increase defense when you need it? The only aspect of this game that really troubles me, is the whole MP issue.

 

[unmerged(11008)]

Manpower is perhaps the most precious resource playing a small country like Prussia.

Never convert Clerks. Those 80-100K farmers in Breslau and Berlin work quite nicely.

Always do so with maintainance at 100%, otherwise you do not get the whole benefit (which is instantaneous) and the lost manpower is forever iretrevable. You can slide the maintaince bar down *after* the conversion, but if you go too far, you'll lose (forever) some manpower.

I do not think the advice of knocking down maintaince to 10% during times of peace is very smart, especially if you have a viable economy. Let's say you have 40 divisions of 10K soldiers. Peace comes now I have 40 divisions of 2K soldiers. Russia declares war on me...where am I going to get the 300+ manpower to refill these divisions? One might say "Tunisia" which is, of course, an excellent response, but this misses the greater point. Which is the most scarce resource you run into when building armies? My guess is that it isn't canned food. Money is a lot easier to make than manpower. If you have no colonies and constantly knock down maintainence, you'll be converting too many POPs into soldiers who could be working in steel mills.

If your going to play Prussia, the best way to counter Austria's insane number of POPs (play them once and look how many 100K Romanians are ready to fill out their soldier ranks) is to declare colonial wars against small populous and uncivilized countries such as Tunisia and Jahor at some point before you start building armies. Arab and Malayan farmers are numerous and make excellent cannonfodder to counter the hordes of Romanian and Hungarian POPs which will pour into Silesia.

 

[AzJeff]

Thanks everyone for the advice!
Worked like a charm - Prussia has plenty of MP now.

I reloaded an 1860 save game that I had, converted some farmer POPs to soldiers, mobilized 5 divisions, built another 18 regular divisions and had finally 58 divisions total.
So I was well-prepared when the Austrian 1866 event came about and after Austria sued for peace, the Zollverin (sp?) event fired - but Frankfurt did not exist at the time because sometime in the 1840's, France/Sardinia went to war with Austria/German minors and conquered/annexed a bunch of the german minors.
So the Three Hurrays event never fired after I beat France in 1871.
Back to the drawing board....... argh
The only thing I can think I need to do is defend the german minors from France in ANY France/Sardinia vs Austria war - which happens often.
I don't see how I can build infrastructure, industry, keep the POPs happy and research tech (education) whilst going to war with France every 5 years - France is able to field x2 as many divisions as Prussia.....and France will throw everything at Prussia/minors instead of sending troops to help their ally Sardinia in northern Italy vs Austria.
Maybe I'll wait 'til 1.03..........

 

[unmerged(24705)]

I actually find it's really helpful to keep more manpower then your divisions need, so that you can reinforce your divisions whenever they need it. and so that you can build extra divisions if the war comes to that.

 

[Darkrenown]

Are you sure you beat France correctly? You shouldn't make peace with them, just hold Paris untill the event fires.

 

[AzJeff]

Are you sure you beat France correctly? You shouldn't make peace with them, just hold Paris untill the event fires.

Yep - I held Paris with a corps of 4 cavalry divisions for a couple weeks at least. The event never fired.
I looked at the Prussia event file, and a prerequisite for the event is that the NGF (north german federation?) exists, which it doesn't, because the zollverin event didn't create the NGF, because Frankfurt was gobbled up by France in the 1840's.
Of course, it's possible I am completely reading the event files wrong......
And, I am using the "Community" mod, maybe they changed some things around.....

 

[Zanza]

I would suggest to use an exploit the AI seems to use as well: colonial manpower. Conquer Aden, Madagaskar or Tunesia and convert most of the population there to soldiers. You can then reinforce your "north german" divisons with that manpower. This way you'll be able to run your home industry at maximum efficiency while still having huge manpower reserves (each of the three countries has 250+ mp)

 

[Fawr]

When converting POPs out of RGOs make sure you convert out of the resources that you don't need, the resources that don't sell for much and the RGOs that are less productive (The big number in the province inforation screen).

 

[Darkrenown]

Of course, it's possible I am completely reading the event files wrong......
And, I am using the "Community" mod, maybe they changed some things around.....

One of the two anyway, here is my event:

#########################################################################
#  Three Hurrays for the German Empire
#########################################################################
event = {
	id = 4632
	random = no
	country = PRU

	picture = 4632

	trigger = {
		control = { province = 657 data = PRU } # Paris
	}

	name = "EVT_4632_NAME"
	desc = "EVT_4632_DESC"
	style = 0

	date = { day = 15 month = january year = 1870 }
	offset = 7
	deathdate = { day = 30 month = december year = 1920 }

	action_a = {
		name = "ACTIONNAME4632A" # Hurray, Hurray, Hurray!
		command = { type = prestige value = 200 }
		command = { type = peace which = FRA value = 0 }
		command = { type = sleepevent which = 7233 } # FRA
		command = { type = sleepevent which = 7235 } # FRA
		command = { type = country which = GER }
	}
}

All it depends on is holding Paris at the correct time.