Population

Manpower is more effected by morale and if it is a core territory than by population. As Finland I made up the difference in population between Germany and Finland by attacking, but still Germany had more daily manpower production. Each country has the same number of starting cities numbers, rural resource numbers, but not non-rural resource spaces and that is where the bulk of your manpower comes from, especially once you get lev 3 recruiting stations on them. As far as game effect, population is pointless as implemented. They could implement some sort of tax rate system where you could tax the populations or force conscription based on population size in exchange for morale and possible revolts.

freezy wrote:

Population only relates to manpower in CoW Classic. In CoW1.5 population is of no significance since all resource values are set independently from it, and we will probably also not show it anymore in future iterations of the interface.

It is a good question. If you have high population, bots will not have problem with you. If you want to increase your population, share your map to bots which you will not capture (for exapmle, it will be captured by other countries, because it is away to you). If you share your map to all bots, your population will be around 80-90 at the first day. Do not declare war on first day. Collect your army, and declare war to a country which you haven't shared map. If you dont have low population, many bots will not declare war to you in late game. Population = good connection with the whole map. And so on.

Population is not the same as popularity.