Let's talk pop cap

Ah I see. I finish the game by beating my opponent with a sheer number advantage that I gained by being successful in the early and mid game.

How foolish of me to complain about an artificial mechanic that limits me from turning the advantage I gained in the early and mid game into a force that can overpower my opponent through sheer numbers.

So far, the best response to this dilemma belongs to El Chino. Unless you play UKF a lot, pop cap isn't much of an issue. If you play Ost, just build a muni cache and a lot of bunkers. If you play Soviet, your opponent has no business sticking around if you already beat him/her with 6-man cons.

It would be fun if there was an extended 4v4 matchup with higher mp income and higher pop cap, but that would have to be another game mode. However, I'd bet that when the game was released that a higher unit count would've made the game unplayable hence the current limits.

This all sounds great except for the one arbitrary mechanic that kicks in around 30 minutes that prevents you from applying more pressure like what happens for around 99% of gameplay.

That cool decision making about whether to replace a lost squad and risk getting wrecked by vehicles or build an AT gun and risk getting wrecked infantry? The basic mechanics for 99% of gameplay? Suddenly they disappear from minute 30-40 vs a pop-capped opponent.

I'm not sure if you're used to playing closely matched games. A player can still be winning without fully wiping his opponents units. Unfortunately in very closely matched games the player with the better pop-cap density is arbitrarily rewarded.

Consider a game where one player makes decisions 2% better than his opponent per minute of game. Ideally the game would be won around the 50 minutes mark by the player 2% better, but around 30 minutes into the game a player with a better pop-density composition can suddenly be rewarded with a 10% advantage against his opponent.

The first player in this scenario is arbitrarily punished for not being overwhelmingly better than his opponent despite being marginally better than his opponent.

I'm glad you brought that up since that's another aspect that's important. Pop cap determines what your opponent can ultimately field across the map due to it's naturally limiting nature. 4-5 infantry squads, machine gun or 2, At gun or 2. Some # of vehicles, etc. Knowing this you can summarize your opponents build and when fighting occurs you can mentally track what the field presence is like. If your opponent has 4 Riflemen and a squad of Rangers as his infantry and you force three of the riflemen back to base and you had to to retreat 1 of your Grens. Well now you have an advantage you can push for the next 30s-minute while your opponent is reinforcing and returning to action, if your opponents MG retreats now you have an open lane to make a free push with infantry, if this happens enough suddenly you're up effectively 200 MP in reinforce costs and you should be pressing your opponent incredibly hard. If popcap didn't exist and your opponent had 11 Riflemen and 6 MG's you push 3 of both off, that probably isn't going to matter because the map is flooded with units. You're correct in that Wipes aren't the only thing that occur, they're just the most blazingly obvious way to demonstrate massive MP advantage. Even in this situation you can attempt to snowball that small advantage if your opponent continues to make mistakes or if this were the early game if your opponents initial vry for territory failed you have an open lane to press the advantage via the denial of resources, the ability to create mines within your opponents territory, or green cover in advantageous positions, etc.

Also you have to realize the concept of the comeback mechanic here is to prevent the situation of "I lost x early, I lose the game now" which while it would reward the player who is immediately better. It's not very fun or engaging being on the absolute knives edge at all times for any small mistake and it denies a large part of the struggle of continuing that performance deeper into the game. If you're only "2%" better for the whole game as you say. It's too minor for it to be a winning advantage alone but it provides you more opportunities to grow that advantage and more chances for your opponent to screw up which would increase the advantage. Though the concept of "x%" advantage is pretty erroneous though since there are so many major and minor things that players can be good or bad at that you can't really quantify something so simply apart from what happens on the field.

As for the topic of unit diversity you're not quite understanding the core point of why you build units. Which is in order of desirability, 1. To push an advantage, 2. to fill holes in your roster, 3. To answer your opponent.

The reason for that is that you want to be proactive and not reactive with your builds if available. When you're building units proactively you're exploiting a flaw in your opponents build or their resources, in some cases this will end the game on the spot or put your opponent down so much that they are effectively dead, if this fails they can come back with a counter unit and stabilize the game sometimes. This only happens if the advantageous player failed in their proactive play, or they underestimated just how ahead they were. In most even games you should opt to build for generalist use. Having a generalist tank in an even matchup allows you to both push advantage somewhere offensively vs infantry, while also screening you from your opponents armor.

Lastly I'm not quite sure what you mean by pop-cap density. If your opponent has less things you should be winning somewhere by virtue of numbers, the bonus MP from having less total popcap isn't nearly as much manpower as you think. I don't remember the exact conversion but it's something like 2 MP per 1 pop cap which would be like 15 MP per minute for 1 less infantry unit which isn't going to turn a game, especially when that one unit missing isn't providing damage and isn't preventing damage to your units causing you to reinforce more and your opponent to reinforce less. It's entirely a mechanic to prevent steamrolling small advantages, not something to provide an advantage to a losing player.

If you've got anything else I'm ears but I think you're just vastly misunderstanding the concept here dude.

Lastly I'm not quite sure what you mean by pop-cap density.

Non-doctrinally, an OKW player can field 11 ober sqauads for 100 pop. A soviet player can at best field 12 penal squads.

IIRC Obers are 400 manpower though I might be wrong. The point will still stand that:

In 100 pop the OKW player is able to fit 4,400 manpower for a density of 44 manpower/ pop.

The SOV player is able to fit 3,600 manpower for a density of only 36 manpower/ pop.

In the early game the soviet player is naturally able to produce penals at a rate of 4 penal squads per 3 ober squads i.e. a 33% advantage, and both units are balanced performance wise around this ratio.

Once pop cap comes into play the SOV player is only able to have a 9% advantage, which suffice to say severely favors the obers to the point that the game becomes unwinnable for the SOV player. His army is pop-capped, meanwhile the OKW player can snowball into vastly more valuable army for what reason exactly?

If your opponent has less things you should be winning somewhere by virtue of numbers, the bonus MP from having less total popcap isn't nearly as much manpower as you think.

It's 1.6 manpower per pop IIRC. This means a 100 pop player would produce 140 manpower/ min. A 125 pop player would only produce only 100 manpower/ min.

The 100 pop player has a 40% manpower income advantage, but you think that's too small for a better player to leverage into a win?

Coming back to this point:

* sim city: imagine 19 mortar pits and fifteen 17 pounders and 12 bofors. In fact, if I was brit, I would never stop making emplacement until the whole map is covered with it. I'll even block all paths with them

Because I'm not sure people fully understand how upkeep works mathematically.

While the upkeep price per pop is a fixed linear ratio, the actually achievable pop functions asymptotically.

Assuming upkeep is 1.6 per pop:

At 0 pop you have about 300 manpower/min income.

At 100 pop you have 140 manpower/min income.

At 178 pop you have a 0 manpower/min income.




Unless your opponent saved 1,000s of manpower before starting to build this massive sim city, it would take until the heat death of the universe for them to ever build more than one or two emplacements more than they already can.


I think some of you are under the impression that removing pop-caps would result in infinitely large armies, but it doesn't thanks to the asymtote nature of upkeep.

At some point upkeep on units actually becomes a massive liability depending on how aggressive the fighting is.

What good is keeping 20 ober squads if it takes literal days to reinforce them after a fight?

Non-doctrinally, an OKW player can field 11 ober sqauads for 100 pop. A soviet player can at best field 12 penal squads.

IIRC Obers are 400 manpower though I might be wrong. The point will still stand that:

In 100 pop the OKW player is able to fit 4,400 manpower for a density of 44 manpower/ pop.

The SOV player is able to fit 3,600 manpower for a density of only 36 manpower/ pop.

In the early game the soviet player is naturally able to produce penals at a rate of 4 penal squads per 3 ober squads i.e. a 33% advantage, and both units are balanced performance wise around this ratio.

Once pop cap comes into play the SOV player is only able to have a 9% advantage, which suffice to say severely favors the obers to the point that the game becomes unwinnable for the SOV player. His army is pop-capped, meanwhile the OKW player can snowball into vastly more valuable army for what reason exactly?

Your hypothetical scenario is ridiculous. You cannot take a single unit in a vacuum and compare it directly with another unit that doesn't even serve the same function in a position that literally can't and never will happen. Elite Infantry are better than Mainline infantry in raw combat potential and are only marginally more expensive popcap wise because otherwise they would be unusable. You can apply the same to Guards, Paratroopers, Commandos, etc to any other mainline and get the same exact result. You are either fucking with me at this point or you're arguing for the sake of arguing now.

It's 1.6 manpower per pop IIRC. This means a 100 pop player would produce 140 manpower/ min. A 125 pop player would only produce only 100 manpower/ min.

The 100 pop player has a 40% manpower income advantage, but you think that's too small for a better player to leverage into a win?

125 and 100 aren't numbers that will happen in game. Now if you were looking at the difference between 100 and 75. You'll find in any reasonable game that those missing 25 population of units are a quarter of an army's worth of units. Which means you either have a massive infantry disadvantage, or a massive armor disadvantage, or no team weapons. One of these will be your downfall long before you can recoup any of that 40mp per minute that you're generating because your opponent is surely about to steamroll you due to your weak army comp costing you infinitely more manpower in reinforcement costs and map control than you'd hope to generate.

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I've got nothing else to say about this. You're blowing this concept entirely out of proportion when it comes to any reasonable gamestate.

You'll find in any reasonable game that those missing 25 population of units are a quarter of an army's worth of units. Which means you either have a massive infantry disadvantage, or a massive armor disadvantage, or no team weapons. One of these will be your downfall long before you can recoup any of that 40mp per minute that you're generating because your opponent is surely about to steamroll you due to your weak army comp costing you infinitely more manpower in reinforcement costs and map control than you'd hope to generate.

Took me only a few minutes to find a game where the exact opposite of this happens.



Both players around top 50

39 minute mark OST has 98 pop and floating 400 manpower vs UKF 71 pop and 150 manpower

Ost goes on pop-capped for a few minutes while UKF builds to 100 pop. Ost rage quits after losing 3 of his five tanks to two comets with no hope of recovering. Ost is floating 700 manpower at this point.


E: linked wrong vid

Took me only a few minutes to find a game where the exact opposite of this happens.



Both players around top 50

39 minute mark OST has 98 pop and floating 400 manpower vs UKF 71 pop and 150 manpower

Ost goes on pop-capped for a few minutes while UKF builds to 100 pop. Ost rage quits after losing 3 of his five tanks to two comets with no hope of recovering. Ost is floating 700 manpower at this point.


E: linked wrong vid

Look dude. I'm not going to go watch a friggen Dane video of all things where I'm assuming the Ost player makes a tactical error and lets his opponent back into the game for whatever reason after taking a lead or wasn't in the lead to begin with and almost struck a blow but it wasn't enough. Shit sometimes it happens, it wasn't 80 manpower that won the Brit player the game I assure you.

After taking a quick look by peeking through the timeline. the Ost player built 4 P4's by the end of the game. At the 22.5 minute mark he had a tank to the opponents literal nothing. If he can't capitalize on that he made a mistake. That's the point where you win the game because the opponent literally can't answer your armor. No AT gtun, 1 unit of Sappers. You need to realize that and just go. He also could have built a Panther before the end instead of 1 of the P4's and the Comet would have 0% chance of survival since that was clearly the only hope the Brit had of coming back. He blundered, it happens to everyone sometimes.

You obviously have no intention of seeing the point instead opting to grasp at any straw you can dude. I'm done, you're wrong, sorry bud.

Coming back to this point:



Because I'm not sure people fully understand how upkeep works mathematically.

While the upkeep price per pop is a fixed linear ratio, the actually achievable pop functions asymptotically.

Assuming upkeep is 1.6 per pop:

At 0 pop you have about 300 manpower/min income.

At 100 pop you have 140 manpower/min income.

At 178 pop you have a 0 manpower/min income.




Unless your opponent saved 1,000s of manpower before starting to build this massive sim city, it would take until the heat death of the universe for them to ever build more than one or two emplacements more than they already can.


I think some of you are under the impression that removing pop-caps would result in infinitely large armies, but it doesn't thanks to the asymtote nature of upkeep.

At some point upkeep on units actually becomes a massive liability depending on how aggressive the fighting is.

What good is keeping 20 ober squads if it takes literal days to reinforce them after a fight?

It's not because I had to make the upkeep mechanic in my CoH clone. I believe it is

MPINCOME = STARTINGMPINCOME - 1.5 * POP

And a a MAX(MPINCOME, 0) to prevent negatives. STARTINGMPINCOME is 300.

So if you had 100 pop you would get +150MP or 200 pop would result in 0

But anyways, there's an implicit popcap due to upkeep (~200). You are posting as if you want infinite size armies. You're going to have to change upkeep and remove popcap if you want that.

If all you want to do is remove popcap, you'll still have an average max army size due to upkeep that just happens to be larger than what we have currently. Idt that's what you want. Otherwise, ask for a larger popcap.

You want a snowball effect sort of thing, that's going to break the whole game

Coming back to this point:
Because I'm not sure people fully understand how upkeep works mathematically.

While the upkeep price per pop is a fixed linear ratio, the actually achievable pop functions asymptotically.

Assuming upkeep is 1.6 per pop:

At 0 pop you have about 300 manpower/min income.

At 100 pop you have 140 manpower/min income.

At 178 pop you have a 0 manpower/min income.

No, everything is linear, nothing converges asymptotically in this example. Also check your maths because 1. (minor issue) the upkeep is 1.5 MP per pop and 2. (major issue) even at your rate of 1.6 your calculation is wrong.

EDIT:
In case you meant that a player at high pop can't push out squads as fast as a player at low pop and described this as "asymptotically": Alright, might be. The pop cap still functions as an important balancing mechanism between infantry and vehicles.

Non-doctrinally, an OKW player can field 11 ober sqauads for 100 pop. A soviet player can at best field 12 penal squads.

IIRC Obers are 400 manpower though I might be wrong. The point will still stand that:

In 100 pop the OKW player is able to fit 4,400 manpower for a density of 44 manpower/ pop.

The SOV player is able to fit 3,600 manpower for a density of only 36 manpower/ pop.

Obers are 340 MP per squad at which point your calculation goes down to 3740 MP or an "advantage" of almost 4%.

However at this point the latest you should realize that the initial squad cost is by far not a sufficient indicator of strength and general game balance. Otherwise you must assume that Soviets can win vs Obers if they spam ZiS guns and achieve an astounding 45,7 MP per pop compared to weak 37,8 MP/pop of Obersoldaten.

Now I guess I know what you are thinking while reading this: Hannibal, this example is idiotic because the ZiS is a specialist and you can't compare a huge blob of units of category A with another huge blob of units of a completely different category B all while neglecting other factors such as abilities and general faction balance/features or simply basic stats of the respective unit.

And I fully agree.

"Manpower Density" isnt a real, meaningful statistic. This weird "All Ober" or "All Penal" army ignores basically everything about the way the game is played, and doesn't serve to illustrate anything that's actually relevant.

The closest thing to "Manpower value per popcap" you can actually argue as an useful statistic is the inherent efficiency of Vehicles vs Infantry, as the former cannot bleed manpower, whereas the latter can.


I agree that some units need their population costs rebalanced, as some units' high popcap relative to their usefulness often cause undue limitation to certain factions' build options. OKW vs SOV is rather a poor example though, as it's reasonably universally considered (As far as I know) that Soviet have a much better "population efficiency" than OKW does.

Armies don't need to be particularly larger than they are now, in most cases, its just that some factions can have a "stronger" full-popcap army than others.

No, everything is linear, nothing converges asymptotically in this example. Also check your maths because 1. (minor issue) the upkeep is 1.5 MP per pop and 2. (major issue) even at your rate of 1.6 your calculation is wrong.

an asymptote of a curve is a line such that the distance between the curve and the line approaches zero as one or both of the x or y coordinates tends to infinity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymptote

At 0 pop I can build a 200 manpower squad every 45 seconds
At 100 pop I can build a 200 manpower squad every 1 minute 30 seconds
At 199 pop I can build a 200 manpower squad every 2 hours and 20 minutes

As pop approaches 200 manpower income approaches 0, and time between adding units approaches infinity. i.e. asymptotic behavior.

Pointless forest for the trees nitpicking

Tell you what. Lets play an infinite resources game and you can build whatever SOV units you want against my OKW. Loser has to come to the forums and post "i'm a big dumb dumb poopy baby".

I agree that some units need their population costs rebalanced, as some units' high popcap relative to their usefulness often cause undue limitation to certain factions' build options

...

Armies don't need to be particularly larger than they are now, in most cases, its just that some factions can have a "stronger" full-popcap army than others.

Thank you for being honest on the principle.

Increasing pop-cap doesn't allow substantially larger armies as I've covered with the upkeep mechanic. It merely removes an artificial limit that punishes some factions more than others. Rebalancing every unit's pop-cost would in-fact be the ideal solution, but bumping up pop-cap a few more units would accomplish 90% of that goal for 1000x less work for the balance team.

But anyways, there's an implicit popcap due to upkeep (~200). You are posting as if you want infinite size armies. You're going to have to change upkeep and remove popcap if you want that.

If all you want to do is remove popcap, you'll still have an average max army size due to upkeep that just happens to be larger than what we have currently. Idt that's what you want. Otherwise, ask for a larger popcap.

You want a snowball effect sort of thing, that's going to break the whole game

I don't want infinite sized armies. What I do think is that it's pointless to have an artificial pop-cap when the upkeep mechanism already fulfills that purpose.

Artificial pop-caps just create a weird 10 minute window where some players aren't able to spend their manpower for an on field advantage like they've done for the whole rest of the game. It punishes strong mid-game approaches for being too successful in favor of "durr push big tank butan" strats.

The manpower cap creates a snowball effect for "haha big tank make boom boom" players since a player relying on mediums suddenly can't spend their resources.

I'm right therefore evidence demonstrating me wrong can't exist. The evidence you posted demonstrating me wrong isn't worth seeing because I can't be wrong. Therefore I'm right and the evidence proving me wrong is actually wrong

Thanks for your sincere and intellectually honest contribution to the thread!

Thanks for your sincere and intellectually honest contribution to the thread!

No, you're just too thick to understand the context of the situation. The Brit didn't win because of some minor manpower advantage, he won because the Ost player blundered the game and made incorrect decisions, failing to close out the game and allowing an avenue for his opponent to come back and win.

You're arguing just to argue at this point or you simply just don't understand what you're arguing for and why the game plays the way it does. Your version of the game would be awful and unplayable.

No, you're just too thick to understand the context of the situation. The Brit didn't win because of some minor manpower advantage, he won because the Ost player blundered the game and made incorrect decisions, failing to close out the game and allowing an avenue for his opponent to come back and win.

You're arguing just to argue at this point or you simply just don't understand what you're arguing for and why the game plays the way it does. Your version of the game would be awful and unplayable.

May I remind you that your original point that started this was

Now if you were looking at the difference between 100 and 75. You'll find in any reasonable game that those missing 25 population of units are a quarter of an army's worth of units. Which means you either have a massive infantry disadvantage, or a massive armor disadvantage, or no team weapons. One of these will be your downfall long before you can recoup any of that 40mp per minute that you're generating because your opponent is surely about to steamroll you due to your weak army comp costing you infinitely more manpower in reinforcement costs and map control than you'd hope to generate.

Have you changed your mind and decided that a 25 pop advantage isn't actually a major advantage to the 100 pop player?

I took the time to watch the whole video and turns out the OST player pop-caps first around 30 minutes. The 40 minute 100 pop-cap is the last burst of his economy before it collapses to the brit player's ingenious strat of "build expensive tank".

Giap maxed out at 94 pop, building a 3rd p4 instead of some combination of pak, infantry, stug or tech for panther. Popcap and making the wrong decision are two different things

When you cant push a 25 pop advantage you simply deserve to lose, nothing else to say

100 pop is fine, get over it. Some units might need popcap changes but that doesnt seem to be the point of this thread

Show Spoiler

Tell you what. Lets play an infinite resources game and you can build whatever SOV units you want against my OKW. Loser has to come to the forums and post "i'm a big dumb dumb poopy baby".

Considering your current posting behavior you're not open to any proper argument anyway, so I'll keep it short: you completely failed to see the point that I actually stated clearly:

initial squad cost is by far not a sufficient indicator of strength and general game balance

Similarly, "MP density" is not a meaningful metric, because the units are not solely balanced to their initial squad cost.

Increasing pop-cap doesn't allow substantially larger armies as I've covered with the upkeep mechanic. It merely removes an artificial limit that punishes some factions more than others. Rebalancing every unit's pop-cost would in-fact be the ideal solution, but bumping up pop-cap a few more units would accomplish 90% of that goal for 1000x less work for the balance team.

Removing pop cap would lead to a spam of units that do not bleed, such as vehicles and artillery. While one issue could be semi-solved, it would also create a lot of others.

Similarly, "MP density" is not a meaningful metric, because the units are not solely balanced to their initial squad cost.

What other factor are they balanced around then? Voicelines?

Removing pop cap would lead to a spam of units that do not bleed, such as vehicles and artillery. While one issue could be semi-solved, it would also create a lot of others.

Pop-cap actually encourages high value units that don't bleed such as tigers panthers and comets.

Considering your current posting behavior you're not open to any proper argument anyway

You're just posting contrarian statements that have no substance and no basis in reality.

What other factor are they balanced around then? Voicelines?

I already answered that

Pop-cap actually encourages high value units that don't bleed such as tigers panthers and comets.

Why?
Ost T3 spam is real, medium spams are viable strats, heavies have actually lost their place in the meta.
Low pop -> higher MP income -> more sustained bleed
High pop -> low income -> low sustainable bleed.

So how does keeping the population artificially "low" (read, keep the bleed more sustainable) increase the need for low-bleed units?
Especially since in your opening post you complained about floating MP while being pop capped?

You're just posting contrarian statements that have no substance and no basis in reality.

See quote 2.

Giap maxed out at 94 pop, building a 3rd p4 instead of some combination of pak, infantry, stug or tech for panther. Popcap and making the wrong decision are two different things

When you cant push a 25 pop advantage you simply deserve to lose, nothing else to say

100 pop is fine, get over it. Some units might need popcap changes but that doesnt seem to be the point of this thread

Show Spoiler

He had two stugs and a Pak in the final fight. His only mistake was building stugs instead of pushing big tank butan, because mediums are arbitrarily devalued thanks to their low comparative value density.