Manpower and Upgrades

6thDragon wrote:

I never understood why it costs manpower to increase a level of a unit, but I do understand the resource and cash requirements. Take for instance an upgrade from level 1 to level 2 infantry. On the most basic element, an infantry regiment is still composed of three battalions, which are composed of three companies, which are composed of three platoons, which are composed of three fireteams. Upgrading a service rifle isn’t going to change that. Some technology improvements would even reduce the manpower necessary, such as incorporating autoloaders into tanks, artillery, and naval guns. Now for some technology, especially aircraft, I’ll concede, improvements of technology, could require additional technicians to maintain, but for the most part technology should make each individual soldier, sailor, or airmen more effective, not needing more of them to do the same thing.

Donk2.0 wrote:

The manpower feature is less about the realism of it and more about preventing mass unit spam. It's the only resource that you cannot buy using money, and it makes players have to spend extra resources on things like recruitment offices early on. And, in my opinion, I think it does do a decent job and balancing the game.

I would actually say I disagree with this premise. My first reason is that this game is heavily based in realism to begin with, and realism has been the basis of rejecting many genuinely useful or beneficial suggestions. To do a complete 180 in this case is kinda dumb.

My second reason is that it's much easier for a gold user to make "unnecessary" buildings like recruitment centers while still remaining competitive with productions other constructions. In 99% of the games I've played, they end with the gold users having at least lvl 3 on all of their units and the regular players managing lvl 2 or 3 on maybe half the units they have. More often then not, I see players fight until the end with the basic lvl 1 units, because they don't have the time or resources to devote to building recruitment centers. I belive that a reduced manpower cost would be beneficial to everyone, and would have little impact on balancing.

As an edit I'd like to add on that expensive manpower costs for upgrading actually encourages unit spam. With this system it's more efficient to churn out base level units than wait longer and pay more for fewer, slightly better units.

newbgamer101 wrote:

I would actually say I disagree with this premise. My first reason is that this game is heavily based in realism to begin with, and realism has been the basis of rejecting many genuinely useful or beneficial suggestions. To do a complete 180 in this case is kinda dumb.

My second reason is that it's much easier for a gold user to make "unnecessary" buildings like recruitment centers while still remaining competitive with productions other constructions. In 99% of the games I've played, they end with the gold users having at least lvl 3 on all of their units and the regular players managing lvl 2 or 3 on maybe half the units they have. More often then not, I see players fight until the end with the basic lvl 1 units, because they don't have the time or resources to devote to building recruitment centers. I belive that a reduced manpower cost would be beneficial to everyone, and would have little impact on balancing.

As an edit I'd like to add on that expensive manpower costs for upgrading actually encourages unit spam. With this system it's more efficient to churn out base level units than wait longer and pay more for fewer, slightly better units.

newbgamer101 wrote:

I would actually say I disagree with this premise. My first reason is that this game is heavily based in realism to begin with, and realism has been the basis of rejecting many genuinely useful or beneficial suggestions. To do a complete 180 in this case is kinda dumb.

My second reason is that it's much easier for a gold user to make "unnecessary" buildings like recruitment centers while still remaining competitive with productions other constructions. In 99% of the games I've played, they end with the gold users having at least lvl 3 on all of their units and the regular players managing lvl 2 or 3 on maybe half the units they have. More often then not, I see players fight until the end with the basic lvl 1 units, because they don't have the time or resources to devote to building recruitment centers. I belive that a reduced manpower cost would be beneficial to everyone, and would have little impact on balancing.

As an edit I'd like to add on that expensive manpower costs for upgrading actually encourages unit spam. With this system it's more efficient to churn out base level units than wait longer and pay more for fewer, slightly better units.

Well if you're gonna stress on realism, that opens a whole new can of worms - Why are battleships bigger than Taiwan? Why is the northern half of Canada missing? Why are units constricted to only walking in peculiar and questionable routes? Why does Ukraine produce more oil than Norway? Etc.

It's called "based on reality" for a reason and not "100% real"

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Second. If you have a coiner in your game, then he's gonna win whether he uses his gold in building recruitment centers or otherwise. It's not a manpower problem - it's a coiner problem.

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Always have gone the upgrade route in my games, worked fine, small sample size tho.

And upgraded units aren't just "slightly better" if you look at some of the upgrades, they usually gain around 25-30% dmg & hp boost which is a lot. 3 upgrades in and they deal more or less double dmg.

Z. Sakki wrote:

Well if you're gonna stress on realism, that opens a whole new can of worms - Why are battleships bigger than Taiwan? Why is the northern half of Canada missing? Why are units constricted to only walking in peculiar and questionable routes? Why does Ukraine produce more oil than Norway? Etc.

It's called "based on reality" for a reason and not "100% real"

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Second. If you have a coiner in your game, then he's gonna win whether he uses his gold in building recruitment centers or otherwise. It's not a manpower problem - it's a coiner problem.

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Always have gone the upgrade route in my games, worked fine, small sample size tho.

And upgraded units aren't just "slightly better" if you look at some of the upgrades, they usually gain around 25-30% dmg & hp boost which is a lot. 3 upgrades in and they deal more or less double dmg.

I understand that a game would be mind-numbingly boring if it was 100% real, but this is certainly not a suggestion that will make the game unplayable.

Regarding gold spammers, I know they will always win no matter what. I'm talking about the players who put maybe $10 worth of gold into the game at the beginning. Every player I know who does this will immediately put it all into resource producing buildings, because they know it gives them a huge advantage. It gives them the advantage because if they don't need to worry about resources, they can research, build, produce, and upgrade at the same time. They can get to those higher levels while still producing at nearly the same rate. People who don't spend money on the game can't do this.

Regarding upgrading, it's true they give about 25% better stats, but they cost more and take longer to produce. Most regular players can't justify upgrading past lvl 2 for units, except maybe the ones they base their entire playstyle around. Really the only time players start focusing on upgrading (in my experience at least, I've been playing since 2017 but took a break in 2019) is when they control large portions of the map (I'm talking like, the entirety of a continent). I'm not saying you're wrong to focus on upgrades, because I chose the upgrade path the first game I played of 1.5 and it worked pretty well (but that was right after my break so I don't know if the players I was facing were actually good or not), I'm just saying that most players don't find upgrading a viable option, especially when it's so easy to doom-stack.

Regarding the usefulness of unit upgrading:

To take Infantry as a basic example, the cost increase from Infantry lvl1 to Infantry lvl7 is 204%.

The increase in minimum production time from lvl1 to lvl7 is 337%.

The increase in damage values from lvl1 to lvl7 is 511%.

The increase in Hitpoint values from lvl1 to lvl7 is 433%.

The increase in speed values from lvl1 to lvl7 is 50%.

All in all I would say upgrading is pretty much worth it if you consider these stats. Costs and time rise, but the power of the unit rises to a greater degree. Of course you have an initial investment of research costs and building costs, so afterwards you need to produce multiple units for this to armortise. This is a strategic layer and the choice of the player: Can he afford extra upfront costs right now, for better cost-efficiency in the long run? Same question when thinking about upgrading Industry buildings actually.

freezy wrote:

Regarding the usefulness of unit upgrading:

To take Infantry as a basic example, the cost increase from Infantry lvl1 to Infantry lvl7 is 204%.

The increase in damage values from lvl1 to lvl7 is 511%.

The increase in Hitpoint values from lvl1 to lvl7 is 433%.

The increase in speed values from lvl1 to lvl7 is 50%.

All in all I would say upgrading is pretty much worth it if you consider these stats. Of course you have an initial investment of research costs and building costs, so afterwards you need to produce multiple units for this to armortise. This is a strategic layer and the choice of the player: Can he afford extra upfront costs right now, for better cost-efficiency in the long run? Same question when thinking about upgrading Industry buildings actually.

My point is with the manpower needed. To use Freezy’s example, if the cost difference is 200%, that means the same number of men are on the roster of a level 7 infantry unit as are on the roster of three level one units. From a military organization standpoint that means it’s now a division instead of a regiment.

From a naval perspective, in real life, the Iowa class battleships had a crew of 2,700 when originally commissioned. Then the same ships were modernized in the early 1980’s and only needed a crew of 1,800 presumably because of superior technology.

I understand the game balance aspect of requiring advanced units to cost more resources, but would it be worth keeping the manpower costs the same? I know manpower is unique in that you cannot trade for it on the market.

As was mentioned before this is mainly a balancing decision. For us gameplay and balancing trumps realism in questions like this. If we didn't do this players would be totally swimming in manpower in the lategame.

From a realism angle you could perhaps argue this in terms of logistics: The more advanced troops get, the higher the production requirements & staff needed for equipment, and also for training and supply lines. The manpower costs do not only reflect the amount of soldiers.

During the introduction of CoW1.5 some players with history knowledge also discussed that regiment or division sizes actually became bigger over the course of the war (the discussion was more in relation to hitpoint increases per level but its basically also related to manpower then). I didn't research this too much myself, just wanted to mention it. It was in the first or second announcement thread of the CoW1.5 changes I think.

A minor tidbit: The increase is resource costs per level is actually bigger than the increase in manpower costs per level. Manpower costs only increase 176% for Infantry lvl1 to lvl7 for example.