Originally posted by Hive
Like I said, the countries above is only suggestions. I am aware that France and Russia are likely to be reborn, but if the rest of us has problems with that: then we'll just have to intervene! Not a major problem.
Given that a french minor can usually form France within the first 30-40 years of game play (on very hard in SP), the other nations had better be ready to intervene right away - at a time when they would rather be unifying their own cultural areas, so that sounds like fun!
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As to manpower, I always thought that you got manpower from provinces with the same culture as your state culture. And all of the above suggested countries has a country culture which can be found in many other provinces. Eire, Scotland and Brittany are all Gaelic, so if I'm not completely mistaken, there are actually more Gaelic provinces than Anglosaxon. And as to Serbia and Croatia, there are also a suffecient number of Slavonic provinces (not as many as Gaelic though).
Read the manpower FAQ, link in my .sig. You will be enlightened. The only current bug in it (it will be updated once 1.06 comes out) is that the actual manpower gain/year is NOT affected by dp-settings in 1.05 as it should and as the display shows.
And no, you don't only get manpower from state-cultured provinces, but you get much less from non state-cultured provinces, often zero.
And it isn't really the number of provinces with a culture that is the most important for manpower purposes, it is the base manpower of said provinces and their population levels.
The main difference between the cultures mentioned is, that although there may be many Gaelic and Slavonic provinces, their base manpower is usually low, and their population is as well.
Anglosaxon has a total of 40 base manpower, 8 of which comes from Anglia, which will soon pass 200,000 inhabitants leading to the 0.75 category. So expect an actual manpower around 15-25 when unified depending on time. Most of the manpower is in small base-manpower provinces that grant no manpower to non anglosaxon conquerors.
French has a total of 139 Base manpower. Even if
all of this was in provinces with less than 20,000 inhabitants (which it is not), a person who controlled it (with French state culture) would have around 35 manpower. In reality, it would be 50+. Most provinces are high base manpower thus granting some manpower to non state cultured conquerors.
Gaelic has a total of 34 Base manpower, and most provinces are at less than 20,000, leading to the 0.25 multiplier for many decades to come. Expect around 10-12 when unified. (And given that the minimum actual gain/year corresponds to 12, that is quite impressive). Low base so no manpower for non state-cultured conquerors.
Italian has a total of 93 Base manpower, most of which is in 20,000 or even 200,000+ provinces, leading to an ungodly manpower of 50-60 when unified. Even if two Italian nations divide Italy between them, they are far ahead of the Gaelic base. High base so some manpower for non state-cultued conquerors.
Slavonic has a total of 27 Base manpower. Even if all these were in 20,000-200,000 provinces (which is not the case), they would grant a total of ~14 manpower. Low base so no manpower for non state-cultured conquerors.
The thing with a minor game is, after all, that it should be more challenging than a game with major manpower and income countries.
The thing with a minor game in Europe is, that if you want the minors to be remotely equal, none of them should have either French, German, Italian, or Russian culture - or all of them should.
I hope I don't sound too much like a deadbeat (too late, I fear), but I just felt like chiming in, having studied the manpower issues of EU2 a bit.
