Where have all the Germans gone?

[Jim D Burns]

I noticed I am only building about 11,000 manpower per turn in game and that includes all axis minors. That’s far lower the the 35k+ per turn built in WitE. What possible justification is there for such a drastic drop off in manpower production?

Is something amiss with manpower production or is this by design to cause Germany’s eventual collapse as units deplete away to nothing. 3 turns after I built some forts in Italy they still have just 9 men, with a couple boasting about 100.

Shouldn’t the allied bombing campaign and land advance be responsible for reducing manpower production? Hamstringing Germany’s ability to replace losses this early in the war just feels wrong. After all they basically rebuilt the entire OB West army in just three months after the Falaise disaster.

By turn 10 of the game I’ve produced just 104,000 while losing 128,000. This is going to get ugly fast when the fighting begins in earnest.

Jim

[Belphegor]

I do see damage to manpower centres in the games I have going. The Allied bombing campaign is already underway (at the start of the game) at the time of the war.

[Jim D Burns]

The screenshot shows only 23 are damaged out of 5910, so it’s a production issue not a damage issue. They've drastically reduced manpower income for the centers it seems. The production area of the logistics phase event log reports I gained 11,584 manpower added to national pool(s) from 3,672 manpower centers. Not sure about the difference between the 5,910 and 3672, perhaps allied centers aren’t listed in the logistics phase page report?

In my current axis WitE game, I have 5,208 centers with 379 damaged and I produced 34,155 manpower in 3795 centers according to the logistics phase report under its production section.

So it appears manpower centers only produce about 1/3rd the manpower that they used to. The problem is the east front box alone will probably far exceed production. So players are going to be forced to turn TO&E’s down to 50% or something pretty quickly if they want to free up any of the manpower income to get things like fortified zones or battle worn divisions to fill up.

It’s going to be an issue from the start as the Italy campaign gets underway, but I can see real problems developing once Overlord gets going and the axis begins losing something like 100k or more per turn.

Jim

[paullus99]

I'll do some digging as far as historical losses & replacements go, but by 1943 the German Army was looking pretty threadbare......I believe the Germans also received (minus new units moving in as a whole) very few replacements in Normandy.

[Joel Billings]

The manpower production is only slightly less than that in WitE, especially when you factor in the bonus once Paris falls. There are also other manpower sources. First, the reinforcement units that come in with men and no need to use up manpower. Second, the Luftwaffe personnel in the airbases. In many scenarios there are many troops that can be moved to your manpower pool. Third, there is the ability to use Max TOE and disbanding to cull some manpower from HQs. One tester did a detailed report on this and when you account for these sources, we feel we are in the ballpark, although it's possible the Germans could use a few more. We've already increased their manpower multiplier in 1945 in the first patch (we held off for balance reasons but a few other changes allowed up to increase the number, something that seemed justified from the numbers we saw). We're always up for seeing more info, just remember to account for some of these other manpower sources.

[Steelers708]

This site gives some detailed info on losses and replacements, I would try and copy & paste the tables but they usually get skew wiffed so it is easier to just paste the link.

http://www.wehrmachtbericht.com/page14.php

[Jim D Burns]

As the great site linked above clearly shows, the German army grew significantly in size through 1944 even though it was suffering horrendous casualties, it wasn’t until near the end when large German cities began to fall that manpower became a real issue. What did change in the period 1943-1944 was the quality of the manpower replacing the losses.

I read accounts of the fighting on the northern shoulder of the Bulge where a US officer described how an apparently inexperience German officer marched his regiment up the road in column 4 abreast (probably the only way he knew how to maneuver a large body of troops). They fell back after taking several hundred casualties but returned marching 4 abreast into MG fire again later that day with similarly horrific results.

So unit experience should be dropping dramatically whenever a unit draws replacement manpower in the period between 1943-1944, but replacements themselves shouldn’t become a serious problem until large German cities begin to go down.

Jim

[Joel Billings]

We've seen those numbers. I'm still not clear how you were getting 35k in WitE (don't know about minors, but there are no minor country ground troops other than Italians and a few flak units). Given the way our system handles casualties (damaged elements), disabled, and destroyed elements, we don't think we're far off from the numbers required to make the system work. We may be coming up short when factoring in the Eastern Front numbers, but the East Front box is balanced with the current manpower levels. Chris is free to post the manpower analysis he did. It shows us light in a few places, but much less so when you account for the air base personnel that will clearly become available in the game, and will be less so after the first patch change to 45. However, this is an area we'll keep looking at and tweaking as we see more info and gameplay. Just keep in mind that it has to be taken together along with the casualty system in order to arrive at a balanced game.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings
I'm still not clear how you were getting 35k in WitE

Here's a screen shot of the log from turn 17 in my axis game so you can see the numbers I'm looking at. I'm not sure what the (0 were local, 24617 available) is referring to, but you can see the 34k number I based my comments on.

Jim

[Joel Billings]

Yes, these are all Axis. The Germans won't produce anything like that as they only have 1630 of those manpower centers plus 10% of some Czech and Polish cities. The German numbers in WitW are lower (until Paris falls), but not by as much as you are thinking.