Population / manpower

[Schulz]

Mobility/encirclements and air support were that prevented Germany stuck and bleed itself in earlier of the war. They may be effective way for conserving manpower if used correctly.

İf the current Pus system is mix of industrial power+manpower then no nation should be allowed fully benefit from occupied territories. Not sure how much penaly would be sensible though.

[Unternehmer]

1.) Now most of the games have only 1 type of unit build as the most cost-effective and players always try to use this particular unit build.
It is easy to find the most cost-effective unit build by using the battle calculator.
For example, 2 infantry + 1 artillery is the most cost-effective unit build in terms of PUs.
But if the nations have limited manpower it might be more useful to have 2 tanks instead even if it requires more PUs to spend by helps to save manpower.
It is only example. It could be 3 destroyers instead of 1 battleship or whatever else.

The idea is to make nations to use different unit builds depending on their current PUs'input to manpower ratio.

2.) Now most of the games are unlimited and each major nation can conquer everything.
Moreover each major nation can use PUs' income from conquered territories increasing its force to unlimited size.

The idea is to make nations more limited in the late rounds: a nation with the very aggressive player will run out its original manpower reserve more quickly than the nation with more defensive player.

3.) It is like RAM-memory / HDD-memory
or like fuel consumption / fuel tank
or like production capacity / storage facility

Sometimes this ratio doesn't matter. But in many real life cases it is crucial.
I think the initial manpower limit will make the game more challenging for Axis players both in WW1 and WW2 as they wouldn't have any opportunity to stockpile units and to seat in defence.

[Unternehmer]

Dear @Schulz, thank you very much for your feedback!

[Hepps]

@Unternehmer Your analysis and hypothesis are valid. I am intrigued to see where this leads.

[RogerCooper]

@Unternehmer If you want to represent strategically the choice between offense and defense, you could have buildable defensive units. You can also have build caps for individual unit types to limit production of specific units. Non-buildable units can also be used to reflect elite units that are not easily replaced.

Attrition can affect defenders as well. The CSA was mostly on the defense in the American Civil War, but attrition eventually limited their ability to maintain armies in the field.

In wargames that are more sophisticated than A&A the Germans face the choice of trying to knock out Russia in 1941 or 1942 or simply advancing to the line of Riga-Minsk-Kiev-Odessa and standing on defense (Sitzkrieg). This can work depending on the victory conditions, but the historical German objective was to conquer Russia, not to take some border regions.

[Hepps]

@Unternehmer So I have started a map with Man Power as a key component to the design. Here is how I addressed it.

The cities generate Man Power (amongst other things). So each nation is given cities based on what I feel the over all manpower should be.

Then as you loose territories with cities, your ability to generate new armies becomes more difficult. On the flip side captured cities provide fewer resources (including Man Power) to the occupier.

What I have done is provide each nation with a stockpile of Man power at the start of the game relative to what they were capable of historically and what is generated each turn with cities will not even cover the average expenditures for a nation each turn. Thus on the timeline of a game... nations without vast starting reserves will have to be very conscious of their Man Power expenditures each turn.

[Unternehmer]

Dear @Hepps, thank you very much!

[Unternehmer]

@Hepps, your idea to add generation of manpower through cities with such a clever mechanics looks great! Hope it would bring the gameplay to a new level.

[redrum]

@Unternehmer You might want to take a look at the Civil War map as it uses a form of manpower to simulate how many armies could be fielded vs how much they could be upgraded to stronger units.

[Hepps]

@Unternehmer said in Population / manpower:

@Hepps, your idea to add generation of manpower through cities with such a clever mechanics looks great! Hope it would bring the gameplay to a new level.

As @redrum points out the idea is really based loosely on what @pulicat had created in Civil War. It is really worth looking at as that game contains a genius level of design.

[Unternehmer]

Dear @redrum and Dear @Hepps,
thanks a lot for the advice to look into the Civil War map. There are many good mechanics implemented there.