Quick Start Guide

I find that my building of units often gets limited by manpower. Unfortunately infantry require a lot manpower to build. If limited on manpower, I might build a motorized infantry instead of an infantry. It depends on what resources I have available.

I learned after a while to push all my top 5 manpower provinces to level 2 barracks, though I find it takes me a while due to competing priorities for other province improvements.

It was suggested by @MontanaBB to construct level 3 barracks in those territories but cancel the build at 99%. This gains most of the manpower increase benefit of a level 3 but continues to have the maintenance cost of a level 2 barracks. I have not tried this yet.

Having enough food to build the additional barracks levels is problematic as I like to sell it to buy other needed resources. It is a balancing act.

Lawrence Czl wrote:

I find that my building of units often gets limited by manpower. Unfortunately infantry require a lot manpower to build.

1. adopt tactics that result in fewer casualties ---- i.e., stop treating infantry and light tanks as cannon-fodder, they cost a lot of manpower to replace ---- and make greater use of standoff weapons like tactical bombers, artillery and naval gunfire whenever they make sense to reduce your own battle casualties and manpower replacement needs;

2. produce fewer infantry and infantry-class units relative to armor and aircraft units ---- conventional infantry and militia regiments require 1,500 men to produce, whereas an artillery regiment requires 1,000 men, a commando battalion requires 800, a medium tank brigade 800, and a tactical bomber squadron needs 400.

3. maximize your manpower production in your top 5 or 10 manpower-producing provinces; ignore your lowest manpower-producing provinces because the food costs of increases in production there far outweighs the small additions to manpower.

As a rule of thumb, I never maintain more than 25 conventional infantry units, even in big map games, and sometimes I may have fewer than 20 in smaller map games. (And I rarely produce militia at all.) That permits me to produce more artillery, anti-tank and AA units, and even then I try to maintain substantial slack between my daily manpower production and my daily manpower upkeep requirements, so that I can produce 10 to 12 mechanized infantry regiments in the middle game on larger maps because they are faster and have clearly superior fighting qualities to light tank brigades in almost every respect.

Bottom line: striking a working balance between overall firepower, numbers of units, a diverse unit mix, and resource production and consumption, is a HUGE part of the game. If you're just producing infantry-class units willy-nilly, without any idea of their daily manpower upkeep requirements, or a plan for a balanced army with a mix of units, the odds are you're going to get killed when you encounter someone who has a good working plan.

1. I don't treat anything like cannon fodder. Any unit that survives lives to fight another day and may gain some condition in the mean time.

2. Good suggestion. I rarely produce any militia. I do make use of art and tacs.

3. I do that.

Thanks

Back to the quick start.

Food is worth considering, because of it's role in manpower production. (build barracks in your highest performing provinces) and on larger maps because it is essential to maintain morale.

Get your rares, goods and iron, explore having a lot of money. Manpower is useful.

1. Don't treat anything like cannon fodder