Where is my manpower?

[unmerged(19915)]

Yesterday I got my copy of Victoria and downloaded 1.02, and today I became dismayed by manpower, here's why.

I have played and beaten HOI many times, so was not too confused by Victoria's mathods. I have played for ~12 hours now, and have come to understand many aspects of the game, all except one aspect...

What I don't understand is manpower. It seems to me to be damn near impossible to acquire additional manpower without going broke through funding defense spending. And even if 100% defense spending and 100% military budget, I get a paultry 0.12 (as Prussia) manpower per month in 1860. This makes no sense to me, especially since it takes 10 manpower to form a single division. So it takes ~8 years to form a single division? Come on! That and as Prussia, France and Belgium I have always started with negative manpower, which I guess translates to underpowered divisions. All of this would be okay, IF everyone else had the same trouble finding manpower, which they most assuredly do not!

What I'm saying is that this manpower thing seems really messed up. If you multiplied manpower gain by 10, that would seem more reasonable to me. I mean, I have a country of 14 million, and cannot come up with 100 more troops a month as it is. Ridiculous.

Oh, and whoever thought that leaving out the load button would make the game more realisitic needs to get spend some quality time with my fist.

Thanks!

 

[Theodotus1]

Yesterday I got my copy of Victoria and downloaded 1.02, and today I became dismayed by manpower, here's why.

I have played and beaten HOI many times, so was not too confused by Victoria's mathods. I have played for ~12 hours now, and have come to understand many aspects of the game, all except one aspect...

What I don't understand is manpower. It seems to me to be damn near impossible to acquire additional manpower without going broke through funding defense spending. And even if 100% defense spending and 100% military budget, I get a paultry 0.12 (as Prussia) manpower per month in 1860. This makes no sense to me, especially since it takes 10 manpower to form a single division. So it takes ~8 years to form a single division? Come on! That and as Prussia, France and Belgium I have always started with negative manpower, which I guess translates to underpowered divisions. All of this would be okay, IF everyone else had the same trouble finding manpower, which they most assuredly do not!

What I'm saying is that this manpower thing seems really messed up. If you multiplied manpower gain by 10, that would seem more reasonable to me. I mean, I have a country of 14 million, and cannot come up with 100 more troops a month as it is. Ridiculous.

Oh, and whoever thought that leaving out the load button would make the game more realisitic needs to get spend some quality time with my fist.

Thanks!

You need to convert more POPs to soldiers. Make sure all your defense spending is at maximum first. When the POPs are converted, you'll immediately get more manpower, based on the size of the converted POPs.

 

[Johnny Canuck]

Oh, and whoever thought that leaving out the load button would make the game more realisitic needs to get spend some quality time with my fist.

Thanks!

The load option from within the game was removed because using it was causing too many problems with information bleeding from one scenario to another.

 

[unmerged(23680)]

just like them

u notice he completely ignored the issue and just answered something totally minute about the load button.

Manpower is completely dead you cant expect to have an army with any country unless ur england/austria/russia. Even france has to use very small arms.
Thx our brethren at paradox plague entertainment

instead of cutting manpower just slightly maybe by half or so they did
a root of 8 and deminished it into negative territory

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

• Promote soldier POPs to generate more manpower instantly. You are not supposed to generate huge amounts of manpower "for free". If you want a lot of manpower, then you must make more soldier POPs (thus taking people out of your productive economy and into the wonderful military world, incidentally this will also increase your manpower/month gain)
• If you have problems funding a sufficiently large standing army in peacetime (note! only the super-rich keep army maintenance at 100% while at peace), use small arms and canned food to increase mobilization, and mobilize an army when you face war rather than keep a large standing army.
• Ignore blendo's comments about only the UK/Austria/Russia being able to afford an army. He is dead wrong.

 

[unmerged(8351)]

Blendo what in the hell are you talking about??? I can field quite a few divisions with switzerland (6 at least) and you have to rely on your mobilization pool more with the new changes (just like in history)

Are you pissed off you cannot conquer the world with Krakow or something? I do not understand armies used to be way way too big and they are still probably a little on the large side

 

[unmerged(23618)]

Indeed, i just handed Austria her rear on a platter with around 80 divisions (at first, more like 40 at the end )

 

[Vharzul]

Armys the wernt on the small side thats for one, especily if your a larger nation.. Also manpower should be speeded up slightly, about 50% faster in geting it then now, but I agree with having to convert pops for it, but geting manpower is extreamly slow pending on how many soldier pops you have etc.

Your best bet is also to colonize area's in africa and use the pops thier mainly as a soldier pop bases, to increase your MP poll, though i dont play 1.2 any more or atm any way, still like to help out hehe.

I wouldnt mind building lesser factorys either as a suggestion i did put some were to allow us player to REycle unsuded factories or destroy them and gain half back what we put in apart form demolision costs, that way we cna save yourselvs from a horrid site of endles empty factories lol..

 

[unmerged(10370)]

Is it possible to take a standing division and put it in the "mobilization pool"? It seems like this would be realistic and helpful. But right now I have to disband divisions after a war and then build them again later.

 

[Pocus]

what is strange is that converting pop into soldiers in Maroc allow you to draft divisions in Madrid (if you have at need one soldier pop in the province being drafted).

 

[unmerged(19915)]

Well, I'm glad there is as much confusion about the correct way to handle manpower problems out in cyberspace as in my house.

I tried the whole "draft the clerks" routine. To my dismay I find that soldiers suck up an inordinant amount of wealth; you'd think they were capitalists or something! Hence it is still way to expensive making the game, IMO barely playable.

I still think manpower is implemented poorly. Guess I'll just use the manpower cheat til someone decides its worth fixing correctly. Thanks!

 

[aprof]

Armies then werent on the small side, thats for one, especially if you're a larger nation.

Perhaps this is true. But only when you take into account that the larger nations formed many reserve divisions to call up during wartime.

For example, the size of the regular army of the United States was relatively constant (at around 28,000 men) from 1869 until 1917.

The US Army was expanded in 1898 for the war with Spain - mostly through calling up state militia units. There were some additional units formed (Teddy Roosevelt's "Rough Riders" and W. J. Bryan's "Silver Regiments") but these were disbanded once the war was ended and they were no longer needed.

My thoughts are that if you want to 'win' a game set in the Victorian Age, then you need to work within the parameters of that age. Doing otherwise would be like playing the 19th century using the way things were done in the middle of the 20th century. The advantage of hindsight is already with the player, anyway.

 

[Vharzul]

Ah but if you look at Prussia and thraught its Histroy, its a extreamly Milizaristic country, and thierfor would not be in the minus with manpower and certainly not a small army, the ARmy was an Intergral part of Prussian and to German Society, so in my mind Prussia should be in the minus figurs for manpower nor should its armie be that low with standerd army, the reserves look find but Prussia did have a past time big Army, due to their leassons in histroy, taught them to be mindful...

 

[Darkrenown]

u notice he completely ignored the issue and just answered something totally minute about the load button.

Uh, maybe because the poster before him had answered the manpower question?

 

[unmerged(23680)]

hmm

yes soldiers are totally overexpensified here they should be cheaper both to pay and maintain not more expensive as time goes on but cheaper with every new technology just like in real life

 

[unmerged(521)]

Manpower

Hi all,

Actually, as long as you ignore cost, there is too much manpower and too quick of regeneration to be accurate historically. Many of you appear to want to play Command & Conquer not an historically accurate game.

Convert some Pops to soldiers atthe beginning of the game if you feel you do not have enough.
Personally, I am sick of seeing the Netherlands with 29 divisions and Belgium with 14 divisions in 1868!

I was hoping Paradox would give us set soldier Pops in 1836 equalling about 0.8%-1% of our countries population. If you wanted more you pay a stiff fee in raised militancy.

Michael

 

[unmerged(8351)]

I think things with armies are just fine right now...but that is just me...playing countries like Belgium, Prussia, Switzerland, and France I had no problems with my army size (between 5-30 standing divisions another 2 or 3 times that in the mobilization pool)

When I invaded France as Prussia in 1870 I had an 800,000 man army, if anything I think that is a little too big.

 

[unmerged(23680)]

hmm

well mods and mod wannabees dont count in this little discussion
since you never ever ever agree with us and unflinchingly
stand on your own side.

Also most people arent as good players as someone who knows
every nook and crany in a game like you, and cant extract results
even close to yours. I know you think everyone is on your level
of playing but ur very wrong. People like to have fun not to
make precise calculation so they could afford 6 divisions while
improving the standard of living by .003 percent as well
sorry we arent that bright around here.

 

[unmerged(8351)]

I am not even sure how to respond to that...let me try

First off :rofl: Ask Jonny Canuck how unflinchingly I stand by his or the 1.02 patch in generals side...I have had some pretty terse and testy arguments with some of the mods/betas over 1.02 so I am certainly not a fanboy or anything. JScott and I were probably the "leaders of the resistance" (at least on the forums) the first two days the patch were out. I definitely think a lot can be improved but army sizes are just fine or too big, NOT TOO SMALL. But after playing it for a bit I realized all the good changes which were made and that the problems were not as big as they first seemed. to repeat I think there are still many problems (the mods/betas admit that too you know) but in retrospect I believe a lot of everyone's venom came from the huge difficulty adjustment betwen 1.01 and 1.02. I guess I just decided to focus on changing the game for them better and playtesting rather than pretending to be Chicken Little.

Just a tip, when both sides of a debate disagree with you (mods/betas and reformers), it usually means yoa re wrong. If you want to feel more comfortable with the game just keep trying different countries and try to keep your goals/expectations within reasonable limits.

 

[unmerged(7364)]

IMO if anything Manpower needs to be tonned down particularly for the AI. Historically in 1860, military personnel for the UK was 347k, France 608k, Russia 862k, Prussia 201k, Austria 306k, US 26k (rise and fall of the great powers, Paul Kennedy).
These are not the kind of numbers we see in the game, not even close. Just yesterday in my game during the Italian unification event the Austrians had over 600k troops!