Hands-On Usage
manpower_per_military_factory is commonly used to determine whether a nation is in a state of "manpower shortage"—when per-capita military factory manpower falls below a threshold, it can trigger special decisions or restrict certain army expansion options. For example, in balance mods between industrial superpowers and small population countries, this trigger can control the unlock conditions for conscription policies.
# When available manpower per military factory drops below 500, enable emergency mobilization decision
available = {
manpower_per_military_factory < 500
}
Synergy
[has_army_manpower](/wiki/trigger/has_army_manpower): Pairing these two allows simultaneous checking of absolute manpower and relative allocation efficiency, avoiding misjudgments from a single metric (e.g., abundant total manpower but extremely high factory count resulting in a low ratio).
[conscription_ratio](/wiki/trigger/conscription_ratio): When manpower_per_military_factory is too low, you should also check whether the conscription ratio is already maxed out; combining both determines whether you truly have no manpower available.
[add_manpower](/wiki/effect/add_manpower): Serves as the effect response when the above condition is met, directly replenishing national manpower to alleviate the shortage.
[add_ideas](/wiki/effect/add_ideas): After condition triggers, add "manpower crisis" type ideas, producing sustained game mechanic penalties or narrative effects.
Common Pitfalls
- Confusing "available manpower" with "total manpower": This trigger uses current available manpower rather than the manpower cap or manpower already deployed in armies. If large amounts of manpower are consumed in deployment queues, the actual ratio may be far lower than expected, causing the condition to trigger unexpectedly.
- Forgetting dockyards are excluded from the denominator: The game officially excludes dockyards from the calculation, counting only military factories. Newcomers often mistakenly assume all production buildings are included, leading to confusion about judgment results for naval-focused nations.