# Manpower

Manpower represents the pool of people available for military service. It is calculated by population, conscription law, status of states as core or colony, and certain national foci.

## Available manpower

Manpower depends on your states' population, whether they are core or non-core, and your conscription law. A stricter conscription law and/or bigger population provides more manpower.

The manpower from a given state is determined by the following formula:

${\displaystyle {{\text{Available manpower}}={\text{State population}}*\sum {\text{Recruitable Population Percentage}}}*(100\%+\sum {\text{Recruitable Population Factor}})*{\text{Core modifier}}*{\text{Occupation modifier}}}$

State population is visible by clicking on a state. The population of each state increases every year by 1.5%.[1] So the recruitable population increases every month as more people get to a recruitable age. This is a relatively minor increase (about 18% from 1936 to 1948), and cannot be modified - states will grow at a steady rate even if they are being nuked twice a day.

The Recruitable population percentage is mainly determined by conscription law. Some National focuses and National Spirits will also increase the percentage of recruitable population, as do later land doctrines in the Mass Assault and Mobile Warfare branches.

Recruitable Population Factor refers to additional, nation-specific modifiers that are multiplicative with the recruitable percentage. These are almost always penalties. For example, the USA gets -50% from its "Great Depression" national spirit until removed, so if it has Volunteer Only conscription law it will have an effective recruitable percentage of 0.75% (1.5% [from the law] * 50%).

Your manpower comes almost entirely from your core states. For non-core states, whether you own these as your colonies or occupy them, there is a -98% penalty to available manpower. If you occupy the state then there is a further penalty applied depending on your occupation policy:

• Gentlest: -70%
• Gentle: -80%
• Harsh: -90%
• Harshest: -100%

For example, if a nation with Service by Requirement occupies a state with 10 million people under a Harsh policy, the available manpower will be:

${\displaystyle {10,000,000*10\%{\text{ (recruitment law)}}*2\%{\text{ (non-core)}}*(100\%-90\%{\text{ (Harsh Occupation}}))=2,000}}$

Because the non-core and occupation penalties are so severe, you cannot easily expand your manpower by conquering territory (except if reconquering cores). For a nation lacking manpower, releasing conquered land as a puppet, which will have full access to the manpower of its cores, is often a better idea.

## Available manpower

At top left of the screen the player can see his/her available manpower. This is calculated from the total manpower, less all used manpower in your Army, Navy and Air Force.

Available manpower will be used when creating and reinforcing divisions.

## Manpower and divisions

Manpower is needed for every battalion or support company in your land units. For example:

• Infantry battalions need 1000 manpower to be full strength.
• Engineer support companies need 300 manpower to be full strength.

The Division Designer shows the total manpower required by a Division template.

## Service Manpower

Air and naval units need manpower to operate, this is called service manpower. For example:

• Destroyers require 200 naval service manpower
• Carriers require 3.5K naval service manpower
• Air wings with tactical bombers require 40 air wing service manpower for each plane
• Air wings with fighters require 20 air wing service manpower for each plane

## Manpower in the Field

The Manpower information on the top bar shows you men that you have already recruited and are in training, including if the unit has not been deployed. It also counts Service manpower (used by naval and air units), and also the men in Volunteer divisions sent to other countries. It no longer counts Expeditionary Forces received from other countries (a fix in 1.1).

At the top of the Division Overview list there is a button for Equipment Details

The men in the field calculation for certain National Focuses does not. For example, the focus Anschluss for Germany requires:

• At least 550K manpower in divisions in the field

This figure does not include divisions that you have not yet deployed, nor divisions you have sent to other countries as Volunteers. You can find the current manpower in the field figure from the Army Overview.

Open this and click on the button for Equipment Details.

This will show you the exact number of manpower in the field:

Generally you can reach the required amount for Anschluss just by deploying some of your divisions currently in training, and then setting them to Exercise in the field to bring their experience level to Trained. But that causes attrition to your equipment. Or you can wait and take the focus later, when you have completed training the new divisions.

The manpower in the field shows two numbers:

• the current number of men in your divisions
• the total number of men that would be in your divisions if at full strength

The difference between them is caused by casualties, and shows how many men are currently required from the available manpower.

## Losing manpower

This division requires 6,000 men to be at full strength, but only has 3,821. It will be regularly reinforced if there is available manpower.

Manpower can be lost as casualties of war. Divisions that lack full manpower can be reinforced from the available manpower. As long as there is enough available manpower and they have a supply line back to their capital, then divisions are regularly reinforced by 10% of their total men.

The base time is 10 hours x Number of men / 100. This is multiplied by a factor depending on the length of their supply lines in terms of number of regions from the capital. 200 men being provided in a state near the capital therefore take less than 24 hours to arrive. The same number being provided further away might take up to 33 hours.

The same rules apply where the total men required in a division for it to be at full strength increases because of changes to its template.

## Lack of manpower

The whole of the manpower a division will need is usually assigned immediately when you recruit and start to train a new division in the Army planner. If you do not have enough available manpower you can begin to recruit a new division, but you cannot deploy a division which has no manpower. As manpower becomes available, then it will automatically go to a division in the Army planner queue which needs it.

The whole service manpower for a ship or sub is assigned immediately when it has completed production. If you do not have enough available manpower it will not be deployed to a Naval base or Fleet, and will stay in the production list.

The whole service manpower for an air wing is assigned when you create a new air wing at an air base. If you do not have enough available manpower you cannot create a new air wing. You also can't increase the size of an existing air wing if you don't have enough available manpower for the extra service manpower that the wing would require.

You can disband some units, or reduce the size of some air wings, to increase your available manpower. You can also change the template used by some divisions, so they need less manpower. This manpower will then be available to use to deploy new divisions, ships or air wings, or to replace losses in existing divisions. You may also be able to change your conscription law, unless you are already using Scraping the Barrel.

## References

1. See in /Hearts of Iron IV/common/defines/defines.lua.