Trade and manpower

[Dustman]

I'm quite new to Rome but played EU titles for a while.

There are few questions about this game I couldn't find easy answers for.

First, manpower. It looks like it replenishes itself very slow, so constant wars are really disastrous leaving you at mercy of enemies and barbarians. Supposedly, mercs can be an option, but do they replenish loses from national manpower pool? If 'yes', mercenary usefulness drops dramatically. Looks like a major war every 20 years or so is still an option, and minor conflicts can be supported by heavy weights almost non-stop.

Second, trade. International trade brings a lot in comparison to domestic, but can be really hard to establish. Which factors affect success chance? Does importance of trade rise with time when both number of routes increase but number of potential foreign ports decrease? My first try was Carthage, but it looks like they can't establish a single foreign trade route save with Nubia. Sure, being the sole Semitic country in game with sea access penalize diplomacy quite a bit, but historically they were quite successful traders.

 

[UniversalWolf]

There are few questions about this game I couldn't find easy answers for.

First read Cheexta's Unofficial Guide to Republics, which you'll find stickied at the top of the forum.

Manpower is the single most valuable resource in the game -- even more valuable than money. Guard it carefully. Mercenaries DO NOT drain your manpower pool, making them really handy in certain situations.

Trade mission success has several factors, including the skill of the character you send to negotiate. It's harder to be successful with foreign-culture nations and nations with which you have poor relations.

 

[Dustman]

First read Cheexta's Unofficial Guide to Republics, which you'll find stickied at the top of the forum.

Manpower is the single most valuable resource in the game -- even more valuable than money. Guard it carefully. Mercenaries DO NOT drain your manpower pool, making them really handy in certain situations.

Trade mission success has several factors, including the skill of the character you send to negotiate. It's harder to be successful with foreign-culture nations and nations with which you have poor relations.

Does it mean that mercs replenish themselves not from national manpower pool? It's easy to see that building merc regiments doesn't use one but harder to see if attrition/combat losses uses national manpower.

Can one actually select whom to send on a mission?

 

[Cheexsta]

Mercs replenish themselves, and they don't require any manpower to do so. They reinforce at a reduced rate (33 men per cohort per month, rather than the usual 50) and there are a number of events that can force mercs to disband due to a lack of action, but they're a great gap filler in times of crisis. I've had wars saved on the backs of mercenaries when my manpower has run out.

 

[UniversalWolf]

Can one actually select whom to send on a mission?

Yes. I haven't played in a couple of months so I don't remember the exact keypresses, but there's more than one way to instigate a trade mission. If you do it from the main screen it just sends the computer recommended "best option" character, but if you use a different method you can select your diplomat.

 

[Cheexsta]

Just to expand on UniversalWolf's explanation:

When you click on an enemy province, you get a list of diplomatic/intrigue options in the province window. The computer will automatically choose the default character for these missions (i.e. the character with the highest Charisma), but this is not always the best choice. Instead, click the enemy province, click the "Diplomacy" button (keyboard shortcut is "s") and click "Take Action". From that screen, you have the same diplomatic/intrigue options as before, but you also get to choose who to send. If you're declaring war, always send some useless Populist or someone with poor stats; if you're taking an intrigue action (assassination, etc) and you want it to succeed, always choose a character with a high Finesse rating.

 

[unmerged(186525)]

I have experienced the same things as Dustman. What are you supposed to do with manpower besides using mercs? How does one increase manpower faster? I am at a real loss. I can't get enough manpower to expand, what with the constant threat of barbarian incurisons and constant rebellions.

Somebody help me out. It's very frustrating with this manpower situation, it's death by a thousand cuts. It shouldn't be impossibly hard to have adequate manpower levels. If there's nothing to be done, it's something to be fixed in an upcoming patch...

 

[Lofman]

For more manpower, conquer provinces with the same culture as you have (if there are any, same culture group works somewhat as well but is not quite as good), if you are a greek country that will give more manpower then you would ever need (basically unless fighting a very large opponent 100k manpower is plenty, you should only need more if the opponent have a lot more then that). Colonization will eventually give more (as colonies will get your culture, it will take some time since they are not going to have a very large population). There is an event that will change a provinces' culture, so one can always hope to get it in the most populated non-culture province one have, but it is obviously nothing to count on.

Of the major powers Rome, Carthage and Egypt all have high manpower to start with but will have problems getting more while the Seleucids start with hardly any manpower at all (considering their size) but their greek culture means it can fairly easily be fixed by conquering the minor greek states in Asia Minor. But the most important thing, do not waste manpower. Do not use larger armies then is necessary (so when conquering Gaul as Rome, sending a 40k army is excessive, there is not enough opposition to warrant it, sending four 10k armies can be acceptable though as they need not stay in the same province all the time), make sure none of your defending armies is larger then the province they are stationed in can handle (could easily happen with larger armies in recently colonized provinces).

 

[Cheexsta]

Regarding manpower, you'll need more provinces with your country's culture. As stated, colonies will help immensely with this, as will conquering provinces with your same culture. There is also the cultural absorption event, which I've detailed in another post:

This event has a mean time to happen of 800 months (for each province) without modifiers. This means that a province has a roughly 50% chance of firing after 67 or so years if none of the other modifiers are met.

The modifiers are:

• Having the same religion halves the MTTH.
• Having the Citizenship and/or Emancipation national ideas reduces the MTTH by 20% each.
• The MTTH is reduced by 20% if your governor has 7 Charisma, 20% for 8 Charisma and another 20% for 9 Charisma. These are cumulative, so a governor with 9 Charisma actually reduces the MTTH by 60%.
• The MTTH is increased if your governor has <=4 Charisma.
• Having a Civilisation value <50% reduces the MTTH.
• The MTTH is increased by 50% if the province has >10 population, a further 50% if it has >20 population, a further 50% if it has >25 population and another 100% if it has >30 population. Again, these are cumulative.

All the modifiers are added together before multiplied by the MTTH. So, for example, if you were to conquer Aetolia as Macedonia and have a governor with 8 Charisma, you'd get the following modifiers to the 800-month MTTH:

-50% for same religion
-40% for the governor
+250% for population

Giving a final MTTH of 107 odd years, or 80 if you have both Citizenship and Emancipation. It might happen before 107 years, but there's also a good chance that it won't happen until afterwards.

Yeah, ouch.