How does population work?

[Zooey72]

The rule book does a really poor job of explaining population "pools". Is it set on a historical basis? How do I impove it? Can it be improved? Why do conquered factories show a population when all you can produce is research or supply?

Any help would be great.

[JanSorensen]

Each area has two values: Pop and PopPool.

1) At the start of each turn (before the German phases)
- each area adds the Pop value to the PopPool value.

2) During production
- each (non-supply) unit that is finished uses 2 points from the PopPool. These come from A) the area the unit is produced in or B) an area in the same home nation that is connected to the area of production.

3) After production
- each area controlled by that major power has its PopPool value which is greater than its Pop value will try to move excess to areas with a PopPool value that is lower than Pop value (ie, excess is distributed). Only areas that are connected and from the same home nations can be shuffled to. Any excess that cannot find a new area with room is lost. Thus, at the end of the production no area of that major power will have a PopPool that is greater than its Pop value.

4) Damaged units
- when a damaged unit is placed "into production" in an area the PopPool is upped by 1 for that area. (you got half the population back so to speak)

5) Conquering area
- when an area is conquered 1/2 the current PopPool is moved to another area controlled by the same major power. If no area exists the pop is lost. The other 1/2 of the PopPool is lost as the PopPool is set to 0.

6) When Russia gets all those free MIL two is added to the PopPool per MIL that is to arrive in that area. This can be a bit confusing if you dont know the exact procedure.


Thus the PopPool plays no part in the game for conquered (hostile) area. For such areas the Pop value is instead used to determine partisan levels.

You can obviously argue that this is not historical but thats a different debate and I cannot say why this design decision was made.

A small caveat. There is currently a bug concerning 3) which lets areas save up more population in PopPool than should be possible. There is also a bug with 6 that sometimes lets the free MIL block the building of a few normal units. Expect both bugs to be fixed with the next patch.

[JanSorensen]

ORIGINAL: Zooey72

The rule book does a really poor job of explaining population "pools". Is it set on a historical basis? How do I impove it? Can it be improved? Why do conquered factories show a population when all you can produce is research or supply?

Any help would be great.

I dont know how the pop values were set - I guess its partly historical and partly for play balance.

You cannot improve those levels while you play the game. You can, however, made a mod that changes the pop values if you wish.

Its a design decision only to let conquered factories build non-combat units. Why that decision is made I cannot say. I suppose it would have been more logical to keep the PopPool at 0 for such areas.

[Zooey72]

I have noticed with the Germans that some turns I will have a huge pool, others I don't have much of anything. What you said about 1 point being replaced makes sense to me now. But does my population get taxed more if I keep max production going? To me, it just seems to keep going down the more max production I have.

[JanSorensen]

You get 11 pop per turn as Germany (5 from W. Germany, 3 from E. Germany and 1 from each of E. Prussia, Austria and Czech).
Lets say you only use 8 of those. That means you leave 3 saved up.

Next turn you get another 11 and now have 14.
Lets say you again only use 8 - leaving 6.

Next turn you get 11 and now have 17.
Now however, you finish more units - and use 15 leaving only 2.

Next you get 11 and now have 13.
Notice how you now have less population than last turn.

I believe thats what you are experiencing. Keep in mind that population is only used on the turn you finish producing a unit.