To have a standing army or not? (MP)

[Chaingun]

I have a specific example for my question first. After fighting two previous wars versus Poland for Prussia that resulted as losses for Brandenburg, a third war was won. It was due to my finally somewhat largish support limit of 73k. After the war I had 30k soldiers left, and I decided not to rebuild my army; I did not want to pay both census income for building and montly income for upkeep. Instead I invested in manufactories and such.

A few years down the road Poland DoWed me (I guess they wanted revenge). My problem: I had a maximum of 42k manpower in my pool (no land tech for CCs yet). This meant I had to empty my manpower pool, and in addition to not have more manpower after that, I now had gained extra WE.

This example rounds up my question: Is it worth to have a standing army in order to converve manpower when war breaks out, or does the fact the upkeep decrease monthly research make the extra safety neglectable? In this particular case I had almost no clue Poland would try its revenge so soon, and I had no other threats as well.

 

[BiB]

In MP, definitely.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

This example rounds up my question: Is it worth to have a standing army in order to converve manpower when war breaks out, or does the fact the upkeep decrease monthly research make the extra safety neglectable?

Listen well to these words of wisdom...

In MP, all else being equal, the army support limit should be regarded as your lower limit for the standing army in peacetime​

...with you building troops above and beyond that limit just before launching major wars of aggression.

I am not joking. If you keep a smaller standing army, you have nobody but yourself to blame when you are overrun.

 

[Chaingun]

Ok, I just wanted advice from people with more experience, thank you! Now I know for the future.