Manpower managing...?

[Jedibob5]

I've been finding it really really difficult to maintain good levels of manpower in this game. As Rome I'm only gaining 751 a month and I'm in a 20,000 manpower deep hole. It takes an absurdly long time for manpower to regen, and every time barbarians show up, it takes that many more years for it to regain. Am I doing something wrong here?

 

[Mer77]

I'm not sure you're doing anything wrong: if you've suffered heavy losses, it will take a very long time for your manpower to recover. You can boost your maximum manpower by increasing the number of freemen through laws (e.g. protect smallholders, citizenship through service), if the freemen percentage is low. Also, make sure you're conquering provinces of same/similar culture (not easy for Rome I know). But in your situation, if your regular armies need time to recover, you might want to consider raising mercenaries. They cost a lot more, but put no drain on your manpower.

 

[loki100]

I've been finding it really really difficult to maintain good levels of manpower in this game. As Rome I'm only gaining 751 a month and I'm in a 20,000 manpower deep hole. It takes an absurdly long time for manpower to regen, and every time barbarians show up, it takes that many more years for it to regain. Am I doing something wrong here?

you're not doing anything wrong. Manpower is the scarce resource in this game and its easy to burn more than you gain even if all you are doing is fighting off barbarians and dealing with internal revolts.

your best solution, once you have the cash, is to shift heavily to mercenaries. They cost more, but are recruited from, and replenish from different manpower pools. Cash, esp for Rome, is not much of a constraint. That has been my solution in my current game and AAR.

There is a secondary advantage to this. The Seleucids in particular tend to convert cash to mercenaries, so their armies become huge. If you have a province in the region you can drain off this supply keeping the yellow blob more manageable - of course getting a province in that region is a challenge ....

other things, slaves are split 50/50 between your capital and elsewhere, so a good slave-freeman ratio will help boost the Roman cultured population, colonies also tend to be Roman cultured (but small), so all that barbarian whacking and slow expansion does help a little with your long term manpower.

 

[Cheexsta]

Pretty much what the others have said. Try to keep freedmen numbers up, and don't be afraid to hire mercenaries to supplement your armies when needed. Heck, even entire mercenary armies can work, especially if you need to protect your borders against barbarians. They replenish more slowly (33 men per cohort rather than 50, per month) and are more expensive, but at least they won't be a drain on your manpower. As an added bonus, they don't gain loyalties to characters so won't be contributing to character disloyalty.

 

[FabiusBile]

Probably does not affect you; but I'll say it anyway. Some of the Majors in Rome start with a lot of Provinces that do not share the same Culture as your Country. That means you get a malus of 80 % (Same Culture Group) to manpower in this province. If they aren't in the same culture group, you get no manpower from the province at all. This affects Rome to a certain degree; both Seleucia and Carthage have a very large amount of non core culture provinces.

You have a chance to convert provinces by appointing a high finesse (I think ) governor.

 

[Melichai]

Worst part about manpower management in this game is the attrition - I've a long running Macedon game where I'm going head to head with the bottomless reserves of Ptolemaic manpower. I do everything right in terms of waiting on the defensive in good terrain for them to come to me, I beat them. This is when the pain begins. They're sitting on my province for 2-3 months murdering me with 5-10% attrition rates whilst their armies retreat out. I take vastly more casualties during their retreat than I do in the battle. I cant really advance and finish off their weakened stacks because *my* stacks are decimated by their retreating troops causing attrition losses. And whilst they attack with 30-50K troops, they always have 20-30K fresh sitting to cover their retreat. The Ptolemics have the manpower to simply grind me down by losing and retreating a lot. Leads to some extremely frustrating wars where my manpower simply vanishes without ever really going on the offensive and only rarely losing a battle.

Short of capping attrition to 1% in the defines which is OTT imo I cant see any solution for that. Id prefer if attrition was calculated in such a way that retreating troops took attrition as normal, but stationary toops (the victors) only considered friendly numbers in the province and that the retreating enemy were not counted towards the attrition target. I think you'd need a Rome 2 to solve that.