Templates based on puppet countries - how they work now?

[Straun]

So I see there's dif levels of puppetry.. I guess when you attack say the soviets and they surrender. If I puppet them that makes them the weakest knid of puppet...each level of puppet lists a % of manpower their pop
can contribute I'm assuming in a recruitment template.

So..I guess I've got questions about this. If I construct a 40 width medium tank template and give it the 'russian flag' for the template....am I going to be able to use all my normal tech with the division? Will that use 70% russian manpower and 30% german? Are there downsides to this?

What IF I were to change toe division 'after the fact' to a dif template...does the russian portion of the manpower go back to the soviet union or does it then spill into my manpowre? IE, can I just 'draft' 200 "infantry" divisions with russian manpower and then 'convert' them to my german templates?

 

[ROGTARholy]

No downsides aside that it will increase your puppet's contribution to the war effort when that div fights, thus increasing their autonomy, thus decreasing the template's manpower requirement from them and increasing yours. If the puppet contributes enough they can get free of your control and be considered an equal in your alliance. Usually though this doesn't end up mattering as the puppets will still fight with you as well as the AI fights.

If you were to change the template after you make it to one of your own, it would take from your personal manpower pool. No tech loss or exp difference happens, just the autonomy.
Honestly it's just useful for low manpower nations with large colonial holdings as making a puppet division means your going to have to make a parallel division of your own if you want to use the same template, as you cannot control your puppets mobilization laws, and if you need that division made and they have no manpower, your stuck.

 

[Straun]

Yeah I was watching some video last night about a guy as netherlands or something using dutch east india manpower to create a bunch of empty armies pure infantry. kind of wonder what the point is, if whe he used those 100 divisions he just created, all the conquest points would go to them and not him...maybe this was some glitch/feature of previous versions that's been changed now.

 

[Orkmann]

@Straun The point is free manpower

Regarding the war contribution, the divisions count as yours for occupations, only the manpower loss matters for the puppet. They would need to suffer very massive losses to even be at risk of breaking free, but even if you are in that situation, it is easy to offset the autonomy increase via land lease and construction.

 

[Straun]

I guess I'm confused. The division counts as mine, but it's 'contribution' to a war counts as 'theirs'...so.......if I am netherlands and make 100 divisions from dutch east indies....and attack I don't know..germany (just making random things up)...then the dutch east indies would win most of the peace conference right? And I'd get almost nothing?

Also...can I not change the template or augment to a dif template once they're recruited? It's so strange...so I have 1 million troops from dutch east sitting in my country but they're in really basic divisions...if I 'change' them to somethign else, suddenly..I mean what happens? since I don't have the manpower to fill that out, it'd just be screwed? Are you essentially stuck with these basic template and width types in this situation? If I "edit" a nice 20 width infantry divisino for my puppet with all the support stuff that goes with it and artillery...does that not work? or...

 

[ROGTARholy]

The template you copy and then edit is yours to command and change at will. All the puppet gives to you is the baseline template and the manpower. They don't contribute anything to the war unless your using their expeditionary troops that they make themselves. The score you get using these troops are yours to spend at the peace conference, and the equipment and training and doctrines are yours. All the puppets get is autonomy levels and depending on how heavy your usage of them is they shouldn't break free before war's end.

Below a certain puppet level the troops they make themselves automatically come under your control as expeditionary troops, I personally disband them and they go back under AI control. Those you cannot change templates. They use the puppet's equipment and I think doctrines, but your generals and field marshals and orders. Puppets also cannot refuse you requesting their troops. These guys will drastically increase autonomy level with usage but the AI templates are so bad and the production of equipment usually cannot handle the drastic usage of their expeditionary troops. These guys will give war contribution to your puppet but they're ideas won't matter as your the puppet master.

Use puppet manpower, not puppet divisions, and you should be fine. The issues with these setups is the fact that the puppet's manpower may not be able to keep up reinforcing large losses or drastic changes and you'll have to make a new division template for yourself that doesn't use the puppet's manpower. You have to keep track of both your and the puppet's manpower throughout the game, otherwise those fat motorized you made are suddenly paper thin despite having all the equipment you can throw at them because there' 50 guns for every one guy from Australia and no Englishmen are willing to walk in an Australian division template. The opposite is true for using expeditionary troops, as India cannot equip their 50 troops with more than one rifle unless the UK sends them more guns.

 

[Straun]

ahh wow complicated..lots to digest...so this explains why my 'puppeted' france and italy who were reduced to 1 small territory kept kicking out units. I put them in a combined army not knowing what to do with them. I didn't know I coulnd't change their template to something more useful because they were expeditionary...which begs the question..since I puppet-annexed france italy to get the fleet, the expeditionary army of 22 divisions still exists.....will that be forever un-reinforced with manpower due to the puppet now being annexed? aka..they'll get in a fight and any casualties will just devestate their combat efficiency?

I think the part I was missing about the manpower thing was that you 'copy' their division template, and then that uses the base...so..if I had soviet union 'puppeted' (which is probably ahorrible idea cuz then I don't claim all his factories and docs right?" but hell I could do this with hungary and romania because they are both my puppets. I 'copy' their infantry division...then I can 'edit' it to add in artillery and support pieces (whose manpower would come from me, but the army manpower would come from them). equipment would all come from me. And manpower for their replacements also comes from them.

I guess the last aspect, assuming all above is correct, is the question of the %...when the tooptip of your puppet level says like 40% or 70% does that mean the manpower contribution to their own templates will be 40% or 70% respectively?

 

[ROGTARholy]

Yes your combined french/italy army units are taking their equipment and manpower from the last territory they have, you can check their manpower by checking their nations, and you can lend-lease them equipment for the units to have the stuff, but if their manpower number is 0, don't bother and just kick them to their new island nation. There is no way to make them useful aside from puppet-annex them and the units (and all the templates the AI had) will become yours to do with as you will and will reinforce with "your" manpower. best way to retain a fleet and gobble up the equipment, just time-consuming.

If you puppet the soviets it's a good idea to take half of the good land and leave them with a decent portion as well. They can manufacture better and build better and have a large portion of their population since they retain cores on the territory and you get a drastic reduction in everything since they are non-core to you. It's something like 0.7% of the manpower from a state or something that's non-core, horrendously not worth the effort if your goal is manpower. If your seeking already built factories go for full annex, but you won't be able to build as much as they are again, non-core territory.

The 40%/70% whatever is how much they contribute to the division. so if a motorized requires 11000 manpower to make, they provide that percent and the rest come from your manpower pool. So while your guns, tactics, generals etc would be yours, a 40% of that division would be soviet bodies in poorly fitted german uniforms with 60% germans lording it over them. Casualties are spread evenly. A casualty rate of 200 of a division of 1000 soldiers would be 80 soviets and 120 germans gone (not counting trickle-back which is a wholly separate factor).

As Orkmann said, they probably won't lose enough troops to raise autonomy to any degree to be concerned about, so use them as necessary to supplement your lines if you need them.

 

[Straun]

so totally worth-while to drain manpower from any nation you are going to puppet annex. In fact, instead of reducing france to a small island or italy to a province, I could perhaps instead just claim the territories with the most factories/resources, leave them 'half' their nation, then work towards puppet-annexing them as I'm creating divisions with ALL the manpower I can possibly drain from them.

conversely for romania and hungary, there's really no reason for me not to copy their teampltes for infantry and drain them as much as I can (in whatever ratio it lets me) hmmmm because it's still using my equipment anyway...interesting..

I have NOT been taking advantage of this and with germ im always in that manpower issue

 

[ROGTARholy]

Best part is that you could do a template swap on your current divisions over to your new "copied divisions" and you'll just need to wait for the new manpower to pour in if the puppet nations have enough. Primary issue is that you'll need a new template for EACH nation you puppet and plan to use in this manner, making it rather expensive for Army XP if you had other plans for it.