Militia and why I hate them!

[Chaylaton]

Ok Steve, this one is for you. Here is my gripe... Militia units are assigned to cities right, shouldn't there be a limit to how many times a city can call out the militia. Here is my reasoning the one time I saw this realy abused in the board game was with Russia. The player, a good player mind you, always seemed to have his militia taken losses in battles and since they are cheaper to purchase than other infintry he just kept re buying them each turn. So I brought up wouldn't it be cool to keep track of how many times one of these units could be purchased in a game. Well that would be considerably difficult in the board game, but a computer could easly keep track. So for beta peeps, veteran players and Steve what do you think about limiting how many times a militia could be purchased? There are only so many able bodied men in a city... case in pointe look at the "militia" that defended Berlin in the final stages of WW2.

Chaylaton

[Jimm]

Dont think this is an option. Its not really in the Mission Statement to start changing the rules of the game.

I kind of see what you mean but I think it is simply good practice to use up cheap militia to soak up losses where possible- they are the cannon fodder after all! I think its arguable that some of the MIL units in the game are probably a bit too nails, but I cant see that changing in MWIF either.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Jimm
Dont think this is an option. Its not really in the Mission Statement to start changing the rules of the game.

Yes.

The guys who are doing the writeups on the land units have found that the militia units in the game serve as a sort of catch-all. At times they are replacement troops that fill in for losses to other units. So, while in game terms the militia are taking all the losses, as a simulation of the real world, all units are taking losses and the militia are broken up and dispersed among the other units. Other games with division sized (or smaller) units throughout often give the player the ability to reformulate decimated units, or the reinforcements are simply replacements that are used the same way.

[trees]

I got a handle on how the MIL units work when I kept reading references to 'barracks postings' and such in German officer bios. This led me to realize why the MIL from a capital city are the White Print ones - the most prestigous postings in an army were to the units garrisoned around the capital in peace time. So the best officers went to these units.

The MIL units shouldn't be taken too 'literally' I guess. There is a fair bit of discussion on them in the land unit write-ups thread. They do not completely represent emergency call-ups of the last men available, they are more analagous to the replacement systems of each army.

Chaylaton brings up an interesting point though. Future WiF could use some sort of manpower system...every power in WiF except the USA was experiencing manpower problems by 1945; Harry alludes to this in the Designer's Notes, or perhaps that was in the 5th Edition notes. I was interested to learn that the Royal Navy had to decomission some ships towards the end of the war to help meet manpower requirements in other parts of the British military. The problem with modeling manpower in WWII is the rather abhorrent methods used by the Axis to fill their manpower needs; I don't think anyone would want to simulate those decisions.

[Froonp]

Just wanted to mention that there already is some form of manpower rule in WiF FE :

**********************************************************
4.2 Reinforcements

(...)

Option 16: (Recruitment limits) Each turn, and in addition to any MIL, only 1 land or aircraft unit (PiF option 28: and its pilot) may be placed in each eligible city. Each turn, only 1 naval unit may be placed in each eligible port. These limits are doubled for naval units arriving in off map major ports (SiF option 9: all major ports), land and air units arriving in off map cities, and all units at major power capitals (cumulative, e.g. you may place 4 land/aircraft units and 4 naval units in Washington each turn). CVs and BBs may only arrive at major ports.
**********************************************************

[lavisj]

For me this optional rule (limited reinforcement) represent more an infrastructure limitation rather than a manpower issue. To some extent the manpower issue is taken care off by the force pool. For germany, for exemple, the number of land units in 44 is much smaller than in 41 or 42.
Of course this does not take care of rebuilding lost units, but the only possibility would be to put an annual cap on the number of land units that could be bought.

But is it really necessary. To some extent the limit on how many units you can build is directly linked to the BP available per turn.... so the limit in manpower is taken into account there ( in the BP availables), combined with the limits on the force pool, I think that the system works rather well.

[composer99]

I do not know if it is still part of RAW, but there used to be an optional rule such that if you lost land units under certain circumstances they took extra time to return to the force pool (i.e. they were shunted into future annual additions). Generally if the destroyed unit was not in your home country it went into next year's additions; if it was out of supply, the following years; and if it was isolated, the additions of the year after that, or something to that effect.
 
In other words, it was really bad news if you had a large number of corps get encircled and destroyed while besieging a city on the western bank of the Volga River. [:)]

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: composer99

I do not know if it is still part of RAW, but there used to be an optional rule such that if you lost land units under certain circumstances they took extra time to return to the force pool (i.e. they were shunted into future annual additions). Generally if the destroyed unit was not in your home country it went into next year's additions; if it was out of supply, the following years; and if it was isolated, the additions of the year after that, or something to that effect.

In other words, it was really bad news if you had a large number of corps get encircled and destroyed while besieging a city on the western bank of the Volga River. [:)]

It never was part of RAW, I believe it was an optionnal rule proposed in a LoC issue.

Anyway, this is a small detail, and I would love to have such a rule implemented in a future release of MWiF.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

ORIGINAL: composer99

I do not know if it is still part of RAW, but there used to be an optional rule such that if you lost land units under certain circumstances they took extra time to return to the force pool (i.e. they were shunted into future annual additions). Generally if the destroyed unit was not in your home country it went into next year's additions; if it was out of supply, the following years; and if it was isolated, the additions of the year after that, or something to that effect.

In other words, it was really bad news if you had a large number of corps get encircled and destroyed while besieging a city on the western bank of the Volga River. [:)]

It never was part of RAW, I believe it was an optionnal rule proposed in a LoC issue.

Anyway, this is a small detail, and I would love to have such a rule implemented in a future release of MWiF.

This would seem to have a drastic effect on major powers fighting on foreign soil: Japan, Germany, CW, US. The result would be an important shift in the balance of power to the major powers that are primarily on the defensive: China, USSR, France. For example, it is rare that the CW, USA, or Japan lose a land unit in their home country(s), so all land losses would be arriving in the force pools at least 1 year later. In the cases of rare units (e.g., Para and Marine) that could be really devastating.

[hakon]

For a good implementation of a manpower rule, one could look to Empires in Arms, also by ADG/Harry. Basically, each of your home provinces and aligned minors add a certain number of manpower points per turn, and each unit type has a manpower cost in addition to build point cost. There is also a starting manpower count for each major country. One can save manpower freely.
 
Manpower/turn could be 1939 population/10 000 000, and manpower costs could be :
 
Corps : 4
Division, pilot : 2
Naval unit : 1 (with SIF), 2 (without SIF)
 
Russia could get a 50% bonus, due to willingness to use women as soldiers.
 
Minor powers should get half mp, with a few historical exceptions. (Finland, etc)
 
Russia would then get to produce 1.5*150mill/10mill  = 23 mp, or about 5 1/2 corps per turn after the manpower pool had been depleted.
 
Germany would be limited to 80mill/10mill = 8 mp per turn in the same situation, for a maxiumum of 2 corps or 4 pilots per turn.
 
Reasoning:
Each year the population increases by roughly 2% (assuming 2 children per woman). Half of these would be women. So 1% of the population would be the number of new available crew per year.
 
Germany should thus have about 800 000 new youths available per year. As they get 8*6 = 48 mp per year, that means that each manpower point equals about 17000 men per year. Having a corps (+ supply and support) cost about 60-70000 young men would be reasonably close.

[coregames]

ORIGINAL: hakon
One can save manpower freely.

In EiA, manpower can't be stockpiled or transfered between nations. Instead, extra manpower each production phase can be spent on militia (fittingly enough for this thread).

[sajbalk]

There are some wonderful systems out there to simulate manpower. See fir example CIV or A World Divided. Most of these systems would only be viable with a computer game.

To expand on the points per ten million point example a bit more, there could be reductions in the population for home cities captured. In addition, units that are killed while in supply would create some surplus manpower.

I cannot give you the proper statistics for WWII, but I do know that in WWI, Germany was able to replce its losses every year with the new crop of inductees. I do not think the situation was so much that there were not enough Germans or others but instead that the demands of industry, agriculture, and the other services (especially the air) took a much larger portion of young men than previously needed. The tail subtracts from the teeth.

Look for example at the expansion of the RAF from the Royal Fying Corps, or the tremendous logistical challenges of the Pacific fleet or Afrika Corps.

It is not lack of manpower, but the need for a player to make a choice among the supply, production, and manpower that would be best to model.

This is clearly beyond the scope of this project, unfortunately.

[hakon]

ORIGINAL: coregames

In EiA, manpower can't be stockpiled or transfered between nations. Instead, extra manpower each production phase can be spent on militia (fittingly enough for this thread).

It's obviusly been too long since i played EiA.

As for including a manpower rule in MWiF product 1, it is obviously not happening. But it IS possible to make a manpower rule work in tabletop WiF.

[Jimm]

ORIGINAL: sajbalk

I cannot give you the proper statistics for WWII, but I do know that in WWI, Germany was able to replce its losses every year with the new crop of inductees. I do not think the situation was so much that there were not enough Germans or others but instead that the demands of industry, agriculture, and the other services (especially the air) took a much larger portion of young men than previously needed. The tail subtracts from the teeth.

Look for example at the expansion of the RAF from the Royal Fying Corps, or the tremendous logistical challenges of the Pacific fleet or Afrika Corps.

True, for instance had the Germans managed to seize the French Fleet after Vichy, as Churchill feared, the Kriegsmarine or Regia Marina would have had great difficulty in manning them!

But to the point of a system which represents thismanpower issue, there are some more grisly extents to which you might take it- you would need to account for Axis use of slave labour in their industry, which someone may have mentioned in this thread. Also you might take into account strategic bombing of cities and the effect on available population. Effectively because night bombing was so innacurate, for much of the war the target was workers, not factories.

[composer99]

Something like Axis slave labour could probably be abstracted somehow (and obliquely referred to) while still having an effect on the game (one possibility: in a module that includes PoLiF or DoD, the Axis players could opt to take production hits and in turn reduce the partisan numbers in countries they occupy).