Most things that a nation does are done by the people who populate that nation, and Imperialism: Concert of Europe is no different. You will certainly want to invest in infrastructure and factories, but your biggest investment will be in your people. Most actions you make while administrating your nation are done using population units.
Each unit of population has a profession, an ethnicity, a religion, and years active. The most important of these is the profession, as this determines what it can do for you. Professions, in turn, are divided into two categories: lower class and middle class.
- Lower Class
- Laborers
- Soldiers
- Middle Class
- Bureaucrats
- Engineers
- Officers
- Managers
- Artisans
You create population units by spending goods. As of this writing, lower class pops cost 4 food, 1 clothing, and 1 beer. Middle class pops cost 6 food, 1 clothing, 1 paper, 1 spice, and 1 tea. Every pop will exist for a certain number of years based on the level of your medical technology, but at a minimum of 28 years. This is effectively how many years the pop is in the workforce.
Laborers form the backbone of your economy. Their most important role is in operating factories. Whenever you want to activate a factory, you must have a free laborer that you can assign to it. Laborers are also needed for building factories, railroads, forts, and fleets.
Soldiers are employed to create army units. Each soldier population supports one army unit. When the underlying soldier “retires”, the army it supports will be removed from the game. When an army unit is destroyed in battle, the underlying population unit is killed.
Bureaucrats are required to administer your provinces. Each bureaucrat pop generates a certain amount of bureaucratic capacity depending on the type of government held by its nation. The cost to administer a province will increase with its level of development. Bureaucrats might also be required to get the benefits of healthcare, but this has yet to be implemented and might not get implemented.
Engineers are required to research technologies. Each turn, each engineer unit will produce Research Points. The number of points generated is based on the form of government of its nation. These points are used to purchase technologies from the tech tree.
Officers are similar to soldiers, in that they enable the creation of army units, but with the following two additional benefits. First, the units they create are a bit stronger than regular units. Second, each officer produces Doctrine Points each turn, again based on the government type of its nation. These points are used to develop military doctrines, which are similar to technologies, and represent the level of training of your armies and the sophistication of their logistics and planning.
Managers are required to manage factories. Each manager effectively manages three factories, rounded down (i.e., you can activate up to two factories before creating any managers).
Artisans are required to create goods without factories. Some advanced goods, such as telephones, can only be made in factories. In the early game, most production is done using artisans, but as the game progresses, they will be replaced by laborers in factories, which can produce goods in much larger quantities.
In the late game, middle class pops can be upgraded by spending one unit of Telephones and one unit of Automobiles. This will double the points that they produce. Artisans, however, cannot be upgraded. A nation also gains one prestige (i.e. Victory Point) when upgrading a pop, making pop upgrading important for winning the game.
Imperialism: Concert of Europe 