Prisoners of war concept?

[spikeyperson]

Whilst not having any programing knowledge to speak of so cant mod this idea myself, Ide love to see a prisoners of war concept in civ4. It would work pretty much like this -

Once a unit is promoted he can get the promotion ' POW capture ability '. This gives that unit a small chance of capturing an enemy unit instead of killing it.
A captured enemy unit is then sent to a city of your choice( or maybe a city with a POW camp improvement) and added as a free two hammer production specialist but without food requirement.
Should the POW's civ become peaceful with you then the POW's are released and go back to their owner as units.
Should you anihilate the POW's civilization, the POW's are released and no additional benefits are gained.
Should the city holding the POWs be liberated by the enemy or a third party the POW's are released and given back as units to the POW's original civ.

I know there was a capture as slave feature in 'civ:call to power', but i think this is slightly different as they were just added as population with half the food requirement and were captured with a special unit.

Anyway i think this would be a great idea if handled/balanced correctly - i.e. the actuall odds of capturing,make the 'capture' promotion at the high end of the promotion scale, limit on how many POW's can be held etc. Also maybe make the capture promotion available only on police state civc?

Anyway what do you think?

 

[Snaitf]

You inspired me, although not really a POW concept, but an allegiance switch. Check the last line in my SIG

 

[Suki]

Once a unit is promoted he can get the promotion ' POW capture ability '. This gives that unit a small chance of capturing an enemy unit instead of killing it.

a spesific ability for it is kindof strange.. i'm thinking the chance should depend on the overmatch in the fight and wether or not there are some kind of 'rules of war' (which essentially are meant to limit collateral damage) at work.

very evenly matched units -> very low chance of prisoners being captured, since it requires the attacking side to be winning by a lot.

collateral damage (goes with the 'rules of war' idea) should also really limit the chances. you don't see any records of POWs captured by flame tanks..

high experience units should also have a very low chance of being captured, same goes for cursaders, fanatics and people in a defensive war..

and if all this results in capturing a 'pow' from an artilery unit you should get the artillery pieces instede of a blank pow.

insted of turning them into a pow unit then a specialist why not just a slave worker? or those 'migrant' type units that have been discussed in threads on depopulating cities.
I don't imagine it would be easy to program in ways for the AI's to include the POWs in barganing, or reactions to treatment of pow's..

 

[King Coltrane]

heres an idea. why cant we make it so the pow is the same unit that was captured but simply on your side and with very low hp from the moment you take it. however, you should at first be able to heal it only in a city or fort. once it is healed you can use it as your own unit. or when in a city, the captured unit has 2 additional options: you could join it to the city as a triple hammer 0 food specialist, or you could "build" a "slave worker" unit for the field that works extra hard. i would also think that in addition to the "unit capture" promotion possibility, there should be a "fanatic" promotion that makes capture impossible and it should come with samurai, crusaders, warrior monks, and other historically devoted units. perhaps make it so japan's units all start with this "fanatic" promotion, or something similar... just an idea