Prisoners of war

[daft]

Like in real combat taking of prisoners of war could be included in the game.
Every time a Unit is about to lose a battle there'd be a chance they would offer to surrender to the victorious unit/army.
You'd need to escort such prisoners to forts, castles or military jail camps. After the conflict is over you could agree to exchange of prisoners, the other nation may pay you to have their prisoners released.
Additional bonus would include capturing of enemy's Great Generals(if these are included in the game) , which could provide a large ransom.

 

[andreafin]

or hostages. or prisoner exchanges as part of peace treaty influencing the opinion of other civs as to how well/badly u treated the prisoners or if u executed them or whatever?

 

[JeszKar]

I'm sure some of you played with the game Medieval 2 Total War. If you remember that had a great system of POW. Not every enemy soldiers died in the battles and you were able to decide what to do with them. Relase, execute or demand a ransom for them.

 

[Bulldog Bats]

Except that the AI can't handle warfare concepts as it is.

 

[daft]

exactly, POW's concept would only confuse AI even further. It could be interesting though, you could force them to work like workers do(they'd be 2x slower than workers but still could be useful) but you'd have to keep a mil. unit on them or they'd escape. Would require building of Jailhouse improvement in cities, that could be simpler, then at the end of conflict click on jailhouse improv. and choose release prisoners-exchange them for the ones AI captured from you, or get some kind of reward for releasing. Also like the other post mentioned aggressive and especially ruthless leaders could kill them off, that could bring some sort of morale boost for army or population(when the enemy was ruthless with you first-by sacking/razing cities or killing off your imprisoned soldiers-suggestion of a bonus-voluntary conscription into army in your cities) which could result in war against honorable leaders, which perhaps is exactly what you'd want.
Again, these are just ideas, might not work, too complicated for AI, completely understood.

 

[Bulldog Bats]

I think it is a cool idea - maybe better in multiplayer.

 

[andreafin]

yes why not have this as a feature for multiplayer only, if the AI cant handle prisoners. i am unsure how difficult it would be to change the AI simply, i mean you would have to have a setting based on the leader; ruthless and merciless would mean takes no prisoners (probably would also raze captured enemy cities). using POW as workers would mean needing to detail or make units to guard them, this is probably the one that would confuse the AI i supposes...but having the feature kick in for multiplayer only would be good for those who play that.

 

[daft]

and under Democracy (and possibly Republic) you cannot execute the prisoners as the Senate would not allow it