Prisoners

[jatzi]

Im currently in a game fighting an AI Major. Its been a bit hard to take them quickly; theyre large and its resulted in a bit of a siege. And as Im sure many people here are aware the AI tends to just drain its entire population to keep fighting. This can lead to conquering a ghost town. I think one, the behavior of Majors should change a bit in that regard. And/or two there should be a prisoner mechanic. This would be good for multiplayer too. The best way to eliminate units is to surround them and cause them to surrender. Rn they just disappear but irl they'd become prisoners and then rejoin the population after the war ends. Or be massacred. This would be a way to let AI majors keep fighting like crazy for the challenge while giving the player a way to get some pop back into the zone after the war. And its another thing to manage and a tool for changing profiles based on how you manage the camps. And they can become a hex perk, that does nothing but just exists somewhere. And this hex could then be conquered causing the prisoners to be liberated in a war.

[Daza99]

TLDR: Prisoners could really open up more gameplay, options (more new stratagems) for quick worker injection, but there are risks to having them too, which could cause problems.

Longer version ------------

I like your idea. This could also tie in when a disgruntled leader in your cabinet or reserve pool goes rogue and starts a rebellion, maybe there is a chance that they could spring those prisoners out and most of them join the rebellion (and the troops have more experience). Perhaps this could be factor on how senior the rebel is, which I guess you would assume he would have more followers and numbers to storm the prison facilities to free them. Also there could be a stratagem to commit prisoners to hard labor for construction or they go into the worker pool. But the risk could be if you end up having worker riots the affect has a modifier based on number of prisoners in the mix or something to that affect. So there is always a risk as to having prisoners. Maybe there is a setting set by the SHQ or a Gov to Do not take prisoners, which will just be the way the game is currently. But if you have "Allow taking prisoners" is enabled then some new stratagem cards are added to the main pool of possible ones that can be drawn. I don't know if these would be across all profiles or specific ones. How many battles in the course of a war that leads to prisoners being taken (the more of these the more prisoners obviously) the game could also bump the total by 2%-4% or something to account for deserters and enemies who supposedly left their posts/freely surrendered in theory (if you have been the dominate force in the war).

After a war them being released into the work force as freed prisoners perhaps could come down to what empire they came from, if they have similar profiles as your regime then perhaps they would assimilate much faster than if totally opposite, so this could be a percentage factor as to how many join the worker pool and some do not (eg. prisoners from a very hostile empire might just remain locked up and some from a different regime get released after a war. Possibly some might join the military forces directly too, and some to the worker force, this could be fudged for gameplay flavor, but i think it would be interesting the percentage of which are released or join the mil or work force could be influenced by the empire they were with before and how well your empire is going.

I guess the other thing would be if you go to war, fight and take prisoners and then quickly sue for peace because you just wanted to take some land or realize you are in over your head, thus it was a very short war perhaps the prisoners aren't released straight away. Maybe there is a min time they are locked up. Maybe there could be a stratagem to swap prisoners (I would assume the Ai can take some of your troops too?) which might make more sense in a very short war.

While on the topic of how long the prisoners have been locked up could affect their morale if prisoner exchanged is made. Perhaps the longer they are locked up or mistreated (if held by a brutal empire) their morale could be very low when/if there is a prisoner swap. So they still might keep their experience but have very low morale and slow to recover this morale, like some kind of cool down.

I could also see some events (where if you lost men to being captured) some might escape and this could be a very similar event to the adventurers who have taken a POI or some area in enemy territory and you have a turn limit to secure that area. You might have to send forces to rescue them and bring them back into your zone. These might be high skilled soldiers with perks (eg. mascot, aux unit) making it worth the effort to get them.

Additional events could be (when you have prisoners) is obviously a prison outbreak (event hints at some traitors in your regime staged it or maybe the enemy sent infiltrators) and these prisoners might end up taking hostages inside a building and you have to decide how hard to hit them. Or it might be the event says they managed to burn down a specific building eg. silo or a power plant etc.