Manpower tweak

[elbasto]

I've recently read several posts regarding the amount of divisions fielded by the different nations in the game vs. historical data.

So, navigating through the misc.txt file, I reduced the manpower yield of national, occupied and annexed territories to 1/3rd of their original values.

I'm also thinking about increasing the upgrade cost to 0.8 (from 0.5 of the original file), increasing the impact of the "Standing Army / Drafted Army" slider.

My main objectives are two:
1. Historical Sino-Japanese war: Japanese push through the plains until terrain starts to wind them up (and since they need to allocate troops to the Pacific front).
2. A historical AI Barbarossa: early German push, until it runs out of steam (manpower) and until the USSR recovers (upgrades its army).
3. A smallish US army (~70 divisions) mostly made of motorized units.

Is anyone interested in trying this and comparing results?

The lines you need to look up for in misc.txt in the DB folder, are the following:

# Upgrade cost	
	0.5

change it for

# Upgrade cost	
	0.8

And change the following:

# National Province Manpower Multiplier (income per day)
	0.003
# Non-National Province Manpower Multiplier (income per day.) Note: Some types of ministers can affect this value.
	0.0003

I thought of changing supply values by lowering the IC to Supplies ratio, but this seems to mess with the allies performance as both the UK and France have a large standing army and navy.

 

[DvD-IT]

I'm going to shamelessly promote my old idea here.

The issue with HoI is that it has never represented mobilization. Manpower growth is treated as a linear function - heck, it even increases with agriculture techs - while it should be low growth when in peace, and very high - but not for long! - when mobilizing/at war. The result is you get semi-realistic armies the early years, until you meet Switzerland with 50 divisions in 1946.

Your proposal is sound, however, as it should make things fairer without many changes to the game files. I am a bit skeptical about the Upgrade costs, though. I would also change the reinforcements cost and the trickleback factor.

 

[Mjarr]

Few main problems with your solution:

1. Putting the game to move on tracks. Basically it's historical diashow where you can be ahistorical while AI is forced to be braindead.
2. If you truly want to have more 'realistic' results it requires combination of other modifications aswell. Considering AI doesn't know how to upgrade its' production lines increasing upgrade time itself will result into seeing Germany wielding 1936 infantry still by 1947.
3. It doesn't cause any real logistical issues. Small army with low manpower but the same IC to TC ratio -> if you're good micromanager and mess around you can take ½ of USSR before even your TC becomes slightly overloaded.
4. It still doesn't stop overproduction of major AIs. You still would se US army wielding notable amount of divisions.
5. Relative to point 4., once AI starts taking heavy casualties there are no ways to replace them at all. A division that's heavily battered will remain so for the rest of the game as it is out of manpower to reinforce them and also to train new ones.

 

[elbasto]

I'm running a hadsoff game in 1.04. Will post results once its over.

So far, it seems to have failed as Japan conquered China and established a puppet.

 

[elbasto]

No luck so far.

Playing as China I still have my arese delivered in a plate by the IJA.

 

[unmerged(12556)]

I've tried in the past to do the same, my method was to drastically cut the amount of new manpower as well, something like a tenth of the original values, but to also boost the starting MP of major powers.

Getting the values right can be hard though.

One other thing, how does the retirement value work in the Misc file? it seems very very small at the moment, maybe the solution is to just boost that up?


I would also love to see more discussion of this.

 

[unmerged(12556)]

Okay, just spent some time experimenting. Does anyone know the formula for determining the aging value? The modifier in the misc file does not appear to be based on any one value, but several. The goal, as mentioned, is to try and keep manpower in check to help with late game unit spam.

Much obliged for the help.

 

[unmerged(12556)]

Okay, I've played with the figures some and there is some rounding here, but I have a theory.

Checked some nations after adjusting the aging variable in the misc file to a value of 0.001 I also decided to compare the manpower base of the nation to the total Manpower used by that nation int the 1936 scenario, which as near as I can figure is the sum of the manpower in the free pool, the manpower used in provinces, and any manpower deployed in the field. The results show a consistent pattern. I rounded everything and I didn't use a calculator so some fine tuning will be required later.

Starting with the Soviet Union

Manpower Base: 133
Manpower Deployed/Used/In Pool 2993
Manpower Growth: -1.6

In game terms the Soviets have a lot of manpower in the field already. I've raised the aging value to the point though where they just can't keep up with the manpower they've deployed.

Now the USA.

Base: 142
Deployed/Used/Pool 514
Growth: +0.8

Now the USA is a very under-mobilized nation relative to it's size in the 36 scenario. So growth can still take place.

Similar trends in other nations seem to confirm this.

I think what is going on is that the aging value is calculated by getting the ratio total MP a nation has in the game at the moment, dividing this by the total base population and then running that value through some modifiers, including the multiplier in the Misc file. This gives me a great deal of hope that ending unit spam is not that far away, more details to follow.

 

[unmerged(12556)]

And for my last nerd post of the day...

Playing with the numbers some has been enlightening. I'm not totally sure how the numbers work, but pretty much the aging value takes away MP based on the MP the player has in the game compared to the population of the country. Anyone with the knowledge, I would again love it if the formula could be posted.

 

[unmerged(12556)]

Going to start running some handsoff games with the aging factor set to 0.0003, which is about triple the orginal value. WE shall see if it results in any unbalanced/odd scenarios. If anybody else wishes to test, all other values are at baseline, only the aging factor has been changed.

 

[elbasto]

I'll check this on the week end.

Try picking up a random country and adding, lets say, 10.000 manpower through F12+manpower command or using event 1003.

You'll see when you hit break even (no daily growth or reduction of manpower) and paste the tooltip detail in here and the nation's total province mapower.

The difference between both methods should probably be that reducing province yield would reduce the speed of which manpower growths while increasing retirement value should decrease manpower's maximum "stock".

We should ask somebody with a speedy computer to run a couple of hands off games with a medium sized nation that can stay out of the war (e.g. Brazil) in order to check the different results each tweak has (original configuration, reduced yield and increased retirement) in his mobilization capacity, the war's outcome (Europe, China and Pacific) and the great powers' armies size by 1946 (USA+USSR+UK).

 

[unmerged(12556)]

So test one went fairly well. Division count was quite resonable by 1946 (aprox 300 for Soviets,) And the war in Europe wasn't over until 1947, with the soviets finally annexing germany. Also, I finally saw china turn into the long slow slog it's supposed to be. with the Nationalists being pushed into the SW corner of their territory before the front stalemated.

A few issues though.

Operation Torch didn't seem to fire, probably will require the trigger to be tweaked a little to adjust to the smaller divison count in the U.S.

Not sure how far the Germans made it inside the Soviet Union, If they didn't even make it to Kiev, then this may seriously unbalance the game.

Japan was so focused on China, it couldn't spare anything for a campaign in the pacific. May be a problem.

Next run will be done with aggressiveness turned up.

Oh and as for figuring out the aging factor, even with it at my new value, Uruguay, never hit a balance point between population growth and the aging factor, so I'm still not sure how it is calculated.

Again, anyone who knows the formula for the aging factor.... (waves both arms at BL-Logic guys)... I would love to know how it is calculated.

 

[elryacko]

Again, anyone who knows the formula for the aging factor.... (waves both arms at BL-Logic guys)... I would love to know how it is calculated.

My guess: Manpower * aging factor = aging deaths per day

 

[unmerged(12556)]

And now I would like to take a moment to thank you for making me feel stupid and pointing out something that should have been just a wee bit obvious to even a thick headed soul such as myself....

Thanks!