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I've been spending some time trying to get my head around the rules on storage of population as described in the second paragraph rule 9.5 page 73 and what I observe when playing Germany.

To sidetrack for a moment - for a while I couldn't get the population available on the Production Screen to equal the four German Population Pools on the map for West Germany (WG), East Germany (EG), Czechoslovakia (C) and Austria (A). Eventually I realised I'd forgotten about little old East Prussia (EP) hiding on top of Poland - doh! I mention this in case there are any other players out there as dumb as me.

I played a game with every nation played by human but did nothing except on my first production turn for Germany when I disbanded everything. The Production Screen for Spring 1940 showed I had an available population of 15. The pools showed WG 9, EG 3 and 1 for the other three = 15. OK.

Now, after doing precisely nothing in my production phase I expected, following rule 9.5, that the German Regions would only store their population value - WG 5, EG 3 and 1 for the other three = 11. Basically, WG would lose 4 population out of the pool because only 5 out of the 9 could be stored. Thus, by the production phase of Summer 1940, with another 11 added, there should be 22 population available.

But there wasn't - it shows 26. WG had a pop pool of 14. It looks like WG refused to let those extra 4 population disappear - perhaps Summer 1922 was a bumper year for births in Germany and all those strapping 18 year olds were joining up!

Oddly enough, after continuing to do nothing turn after turn, from Fall 1940 onwards the storage rules were obeyed and I never had more than 22 population available.

Can anyone explain what's going on - am I missing something?

I'm having problems understanding how Germany manages to store as much resources as it does as well but I haven't got the will power to analyse that one yet!

wow, very nice research into the subject. I'll try to experiment with it also.

of course I don't think we need a reason to nerf the german population limits.

the population pool for west germany is 9, despite its population being 5. every place else has its population pool matching its population.

it was definitly designed like that, perhaps to represent the rhine valleys capability to develop its industry and worker base.

Thanks for your reply, aletoledo - good to know I wasn't going mad.

I couldn't help myself (being an analyst by trade) - I had to go on and carry out a similar exercise in respect of the storage of resources. It was really bugging me because I never knew for sure how big my resource figures would be in the production phase and how those figures were achieved. Seemed that the figure you got was almost slightly random.

After a lot of careful analysis I've found that .....(drum roll) ........ the rules are precisely correct! I just don't think it's a perfectly simple process, at least to the WAW novice. I feel happy that I've spent several hours experimenting, though - guess I'm just one of those sad creatures that just have to know exactly how something works.

I could post my analysis on this but it might be rather dull and I'm not sure, from reading the posts, that many others have a problem/interest in this.

Very good catch.

If at the end of the German production phase there is more than 9 population in the pop pool in W. Germany then the amount is reset to 5. If the amount is less than 10 no change occurs.

This is very obviously a bug. For a moment I figured the bug was that if you had less than twice the pop value in the pop pool then the excess isnt discarded. That however, does not appear to be the case based on leaving 4 pop in the E. German pool and seeing it reset to 3.

I have added this bug to the bug list.