Before a division sets foot on the map, it has to clear two bottlenecks: enough manpower to recruit it, and training time to get it ready. Whoever doesn't plan this ahead ends up mid-war with the deployment queue stuck in yellow, wondering why.
Manpower: Where It Comes From and Where It Goes
Free manpower is the sum of the recruitable population across every state you control, plus any surplus stored off-map. It grows several ways: raising the conscription law, controlling more states (especially cores), applying gentler occupation policies in non-core territory, monthly population growth, or simply disbanding units you no longer need.
Used manpower is split between divisions already deployed and those currently training. Every battalion and support company has its own cost: a full-strength infantry battalion needs 1000, an engineer company 300 — the division designer shows the exact total for any template before you build it.
Conscription Laws: the Main Lever
The conscription law determines what percentage of your recruitable population you can turn into military manpower. Changing it costs 
150 political power per level of difference between the old law and the new one, and harsher laws also come with requirements — more war support, being at war, or a certain ruling ideology, depending on the case.
Disarmed Nation — 1.0% recruitable population, no economic penalty.
Volunteer Only (the default for most nations) — 1.5%, no penalty.
Limited Conscription — 2.5%, no penalty.
Extensive Conscription — 5.0%, no economic penalty, just +10% training time.
Service by Requirement — 10.0%, and this is where the cuts start: −10% factory and dockyard output, −10% construction speed, +20% training time.
All Adults Serve — 20.0%, with −30% across those same three economic categories and +30% training time.
Scraping the Barrel — 25.0%, with −40% across those categories and +50% training time.
Raising the law up to Extensive Conscription is practically free: more manpower, no real economic cost. From Service by Requirement onward you're paying with industrial output, so it's worth saving those laws for when you actually need them — usually once you're already at war, not before.
The Recruit & Deploy Screen
The Recruit & Deploy screen (hotkey U) controls the entire flow of manpower and equipment into new and existing divisions. To train new divisions, click "Train" on one of your templates: you can train several units in parallel with "Add Unit," or raise the number to train them sequentially, one after another. You need to pick a location on the map where they'll spawn once finished, and you can optionally assign them to an order or a specific command right away, so they join it as soon as they deploy.
On the left of that same screen is the priority panel, split into several categories — Reinforcements, Upgrades, Supply Trucks, Operations, Garrisons, and Assaults — each with its own available-equipment bar and its three priority levels. On the right is the list of all your division templates, with a button to train new units straight from there.
The simultaneous-training manpower cap (75% of deployed manpower, or 100,000, whichever is higher) applies here directly: if you try to train more than that, the rest of the queue simply waits its turn without consuming resources yet.
Training and Experience Levels
A division in training gradually gains experience, as long as it has enough manpower and equipment available — if either runs short, training halts and the equipment bar turns yellow until supply catches up.
Each deployment can group several identical divisions in parallel (top right, the "Add Unit" button and the infinity symbol to repeat it without limit), and each one progresses on its own with its own manpower and equipment bar. The up/down arrows reorder the queue, and the X cancels that specific deployment without affecting the rest.
Green (-25% in combat) — can be deployed early, as soon as training reaches 20%, if you need the division right away.
Trained (no modifier) — the level any division automatically deploys at once it completes 100% of training.
Regular (+25% in combat) — not reached through training, but by exercising the division once it's deployed, which gradually consumes equipment.
Veteran (+75% in combat) — the highest level, from 90% experience. You can't reach it by exercising: it's only earned by actually fighting, so only your most battle-hardened front-line divisions ever get there (with Seasoned, +50%, as the intermediate step along the way).
Reinforcements and Equipment Upgrades
Deployed divisions request reinforcements as soon as they're missing manpower or equipment — from combat losses, a template change, or plain attrition. Manpower arrives in chunks of 10% of the division's maximum, at a rate of 10 per hour multiplied by the supply area's reinforcement delivery speed (normally close to 1).
Upgrades replace old equipment with better variants as soon as they're available in the stockpile. You can also do the opposite on purpose — assign obsolete equipment to low-priority divisions, like garrisons, to free up the good equipment for the divisions actually fighting on the front line.
Deployments, reinforcements, and upgrades can all be flagged with low, medium, or high priority to decide who gets scarce equipment first. Lend-Lease to another country always has the highest priority of all, above everything else.
Common Mistakes
- Raising the conscription law too late — it mobilizes population that takes time to arrive; you need to get ahead of the war, not react during it.
- Launching too many divisions into training at once and hitting the 75%/100,000 cap, leaving the whole queue stuck in yellow for no apparent reason.
- Sending freshly trained divisions straight to the front at Green level, without exercising them up to Regular first.
- Not checking priorities when equipment is scarce, letting important front-line reinforcements go without supply while less urgent divisions soak up the surplus.