The role Population

As far as I understand pop is both related to role and power.
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It's only related to power. Or ideally it should be at least.
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Imo it is both. A TD which is a specialized unit and counter tanks should lower pop than main battle tank that can be both AI and AT, but we are drifting of topic a bit.
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Population is there to "budget" which units you can fit into your army. That's the only purpose. That's why all heavies cost around the same map regardless of role and the PWerfer costs as much as a P4 despite having completely different roles.
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(I took the liberty of copying Hannibals posts in seperate thread since I find this a rather interesting topic. I hope he does not mind.)

Imo the Pop serves more roles than just "which units you can fit into your army" and Pop for unit is not simply related to power.

Pop not only limits the power number of unit one can field but also increases the upkeep of one's army. In sense it forces you make good use of these.

When comparing units that do pretty much the same thing (and not so much have the same role) the power of each unit is directly related with Pop.

When it comes to specialized units or of force multiplier unit the pop is adjusted accordingly.

For instance a TD has lower pop than tank although its gun is superior in AT than tanks. Or certain artillery unit has high pop so that they will not get spammed and abused. Some goes for emplacements.

In sort imo pop can be used for a number of reason including balancing unit and preventing spamming. That imo was the case with Churchill who although not extremely powerful become an issue once produced in numbers. Thus is got one of the highest pop for stock units although not reflect in its price/power. (Actually it could see a small reduction in pop 1-2).

For instance a TD has lower pop than tank although its gun is superior in AT than tanks.

The only units where this is true is the SU76, the StuG and that's probably it? All others have higher POP than even a medium tank.
Brummbar has higher population than any infantry unit. Main lines have roughly the same population as team weapons. All this does not fit into balancing POP towards role, only towards the strength of the unit.

Or certain artillery unit has high pop so that they will not get spammed and abused. Some goes for emplacements.

Which means that the unit is strong (high power level), so it needs high POP.

In sort imo pop can be used for a number of reason including balancing unit and preventing spamming. That imo was the case with Churchill who although not extremely powerful become an issue once produced in numbers. Thus is got one of the highest pop for stock units although not reflect in its price/power. (Actually it could see a small reduction in pop 1-2).

High power level in groups of two still means high power. That's why the pop is high. To make spamming harder and create holes in your line up. That's also why heavies got limited to one, because two of them were gg and the only way to prevent this is to put a hefty POP price on them.

The only units where this is true is the SU76, the StuG and that's probably it? All others have higher POP than even a medium tank.

That imo is because SU-76/Stug main role is counter mediums tanks with a Pop of 10-14, M36/FF/SU-85 are meant to counter Heavy/Super heavy with a pop of above 20.

Brummbar has higher population than any infantry unit.

Mainly because it is vehicle costing fuel and not infatry.

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Main lines have roughly the same population as team weapons.

I am not sure how you compare strength between main lines and support weapons but if one uses cost as an indicator, HM-42 is 260 6 pop and grenadier is 240 7 pop.

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And one has to keep in mind that many units have seen changes in cost and power and pop was not always adjusted.

All this does not fit into balancing POP towards role, only towards the strength of the unit.

Which means that the unit is strong (high power level), so it needs high POP.

High power level in groups of two still means high power. That's why the pop is high. To make spamming harder and create holes in your line up. That's also why heavies got limited to one, because two of them were gg and the only way to prevent this is to put a hefty POP price on them.

As one can see Tiger was artificially "over populated" to reduce the power of building more than one.
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In sort population role is imo a little more complicated.

That imo is because SU-76/Stug main role is counter mediums tanks with a Pop of 10-14, M36/FF/SU-85 are meant to counter Heavy/Super heavy with a pop of above 20.

This is your personal ideal. Jackson and SU85 are the primary choice for all targets, and UKF has no "light TD" so you buy the FF to kill mediums as well.

Mainly because it is vehicle costing fuel and not infatry.

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Cost has so far not been a point to influence population. This was a response to your claim that counters are always cheaper than what they counter, which is not true.

I am not sure how you compare strength between main lines and support weapons but if one uses cost as an indicator, HM-42 is 260 6 pop and grenadier is 240 7 pop.

Again this relates to both the "counter is cheaper" claim as well as the claim that the role influences the population. We see units of completely different roles costing the same population. Therefore the role is no predictor for population cost.

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And one has to keep in mind that many units have seen changes in cost and power and pop was not always adjusted.

Not sure why you quote that as a counter to my point. The note says that population has been adjusted to the power level as well as to create a higher cost for spamming Grens because you can't fit as many other units into the build anymore. Which is exactly what I originally postulated.

Units can be balanced by both cost and power adjustments. Both have been extensively used in the past. High impact units get high population, low impact units get low pop.

As one can see Tiger was artificially "over populated" to reduce the power of building more than one.
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In sort population role is imo a little more complicated.

Tiger has previously been high pop because the meta was to get two which created a huge power spike. The attempt was to counter that by high pop cost. Heavies got limited to one, power spike was lowered, population adjusted accordingly. Exactly what I initially claimed.



I have no idea where you are going with this thread. What I initially debated was your claim that the role of a unit influences the population cost, nothing else. Please refer to only this point then.

What I really dont like regarding population, which is often is ignored completly, is the way how UKF and USF works.

If we take Sov\Ost\OKW we will see that, all three of the factions are much more inf based then both USF and UKF.

To be more clear, all of the mentioned factions have mainline inf be it Cons\Grens\Volks, usually you will have 4 of thouse BUT all three of them have limited scale. Meaning that on top of the them you will also have to have somesort of other more elite inf be it Guards, Shocks, PGs, Obersts, Fallsh or Jaegers.
USF and UKF on the other hand dont need it.

Without jumping too deep into how factions plays and speaking of standart army roster, all 5 factions generally expected to have pretty much even amount of LVs, support weapons and other units which take pop-cap and they all are relatively in the same pop-cap category with their counter-parts or lets say unit classes.

You usually hear "Well get Obersts, well get guards, well get PGs", but they are not pop-cap free, quite opposite actually they are very pop-cap heavy 2 squads of each takes 18 pop-cap from you on top of the x4 7 pop-cap for any other mainlines.

In other words it can take 28 pop-cap for UKF and 39 for USF (counting 1 officer+Major, since they are part of tech) to have complete inf army, while for other factions it takes at least 48 pop-cap.
And again this is excluding all the other units, nessesery support weapons, engis and other stuff, but as I said, its pointless to compare them because they have relatively same pop-cap and pretty much same amout of them usually are on the field.

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I have no idea where you are going with this thread. What I initially debated was your claim that the role of a unit influences the population cost, nothing else. Please refer to only this point then.

A Tank can be counter by cheaper, with less pop tank hunter. The Tank hunter is not actually a "stronger" unit than the tank. It simply its hard counter.

in all honesty a pop cap exist so your pc doesn't melt or crash

in all honesty a pop cap exist so your pc doesn't melt or crash

A Tank can be counter by cheaper, with less pop tank hunter. The Tank hunter is not actually a "stronger" unit than the tank. It simply its hard counter.

The TD has no AI option. If both tank and TD have the same AT, the normal tank is more powerfull overall and the TD should have a lower cost (resources and pop, all assuming same survivability). If the TD provides stronger AT, it's price increases. That's how Allied TDs end up at their current cost, because they provide an extremely strong AT capability.

The common denominator is the power of the unit, not the role. We also don't see strong correlation between the role and population in game that could not be explained by 'power' (I'll just keep this as an abstract thing since most of it is derived from how well a unit performs in the game).

Hannibal is 100% right about the role of population.
Higher pop usually means more expensive unit, but we've had more then enough examples of balancing by changing how many units you can realistically fit into your army through population, churchill would be shining, gold example here.

The TD has no AI option. If both tank and TD have the same AT, the normal tank is more powerfull overall and the TD should have a lower cost (resources and pop, all assuming same survivability).

Yes but things are not that simply because of Rock-Paper-scissors factor. A TD is generally more powerful than Tank vs vehicles but less powerful vs soft target.

So the "role" of unit does affect the power level and thus it should also effect pop.

If the TD provides stronger AT, it's price increases. That's how Allied TDs end up at their current cost, because they provide an extremely strong AT capability.

Yes in units within the same "role" the relationship with cost/pop becomes more linear.

The common denominator is the power of the unit, not the role. We also don't see strong correlation between the role and population in game that could not be explained by 'power' (I'll just keep this as an abstract thing since most of it is derived from how well a unit performs in the game).

Only direct comparison of "power" of units with different role/mechanisms is not always possible.

How can one decide if a Rocker artillery is more powerful than a TD? There are so many factors that the question has no meaning.

Population is also used to prevent players from accumulating too big of a manpower reserve

Initially, you have a large income, and no expenditure of manpower (combat hasn’t started yet), but as you build squads your income tapers off due to their population causing upkeep, and combat requiring reinforcements (bleed)

At this point, income still outpaces bleed, allowing a small reserve to build up, but that is then spent on tech. As you tech up, you buy more and more units until you reach 100 pop cap, in which case manpower bleed should about equal income.


So basically population and upkeep exist so that manpower income tapers off along with spending, so that you can’t build up a huge manpower reserve and just ignore all losses by immediately buying replacements.