Is there a population pool cap?

[Protaganist]

I was wondering how the population pool worked. It is pretty simple when looking at it in total from the nation side as each territory in the nation provides population at the beginning of the turn and population is used for production at the end of the turn.

But what if you held a number of units at the last box of the production spiral and therefore did not take down the population. So you want to bring in all your bombers at once lets say, once you have fighters to defend them. Are you going to be able to keep the population turn after turn or will some territories hit their cap at some point?

What is the method that decides where the population is pulled from? If it is closest first, some of the farthest territories could build up population in their pool and they are most likely to be taken first, also if population is pulled from another factory's pool and this factory is then taken, that factory will be having a problem.

[christian brown]

OK, pop pools work like this:
You can "save up" population in the pool equal to the population level in each region, so a region with a pop of 1 generates 1 pop and can "save up" 1 pop in the pool.
You´ve probably already noticed/read that any damaged unit that makes is back to a factory gives 1 pop point for production purposes. Ex: 10 inf are damaged, they give half of their pop value 10/2=5 back to their World Power.
If a region that has population "saved up" in a pool is captured, then half of that is shifted to an adjacent friendly region.
Hope that clears things up for you.

[Protaganist]

I sort of get it.  Does that mean that Austria with a population of 1 can individually hold 1 in its population pool?  And that Germany with a total population of 12 can hold up to 12 in its population pool?  That doesn't exactly make sense because you can build more than six things every turn in Germany and some amount of population holds over each turn.  Is that only the damaged unit population?  I assume those are held in the factory they end up going to. 

The reason I am wondering about the max population pool is because Germany jumps to 4x factory production Wi' 1944 but the population pool may be the limiter.  I like building factories in different scenarios but I am not always able to build all I want when I want even though the resources are there because I can't predict population totals (I know growth is 12 a turn) as well as I can resource growth.  I do know damaged units factor a great deal into the totals but was wondering if there is any other factor.

So it looks like there is no way to bank population from turn to turn which sort of doesn't make sense because it is saying that you only grow your population if you send your boys into the Army, Navy, or Air Force... but then where are the boys to meet up with the girls to grow the population?

[christian brown]

Original:Protagonist
I sort of get it.  Does that mean that Austria with a population of 1 can individually hold 1 in its population pool?  And that Germany with a total population of 12 can hold up to 12 in its population pool?

Actually this means that each region can save up to level twice as high as it´s population, so Austria can hold 2.

The reason I am wondering about the max population pool is because Germany jumps to 4x factory production Wi' 1944 but the population pool may be the limiter.

So true, this is why population poor nations must maximize their unit builds early in the game (and try not to waste any-in other words, try to use all or most of your pop each turn and never go 2 full turns without building units as this will result in a huge pop waste.)

So it looks like there is no way to bank population from turn to turn

So, no not at all, you can bank (double) up to your total pop each turn but it goes away if unused for longer than a turn.

Ex:
Germany starts its´ turn with a full 12 pop and doesn´t build anything and doesn´t get any damaged units.
2nd turn sees Germany having 24 pop available = 12 pop + 12 saved from last turn.
If this isn´t used, the 3rd turn you still have 24 (you just lost 12.)
Great question by the way and very important, particularly for Germany and the UK/Commonwealth/Canada.