Prisoners?

Seeing as the Napoleonic era was that of gentlemanly conduct, and especially as gentlemen actually appear in the game, there should really be some sort of prisoner system. When a general and his staff were caught, they weren't slaughtered mercilessly as happens at the moment in Napoleon; they would be taken prisoner and then (hopefully) exchanged. I think this would make an interesting feature to be added to diplomacy, especially considering all the effort that Creative Assembly went into with the general portraits and accurate stats reflecting the general's actual abilities.

Its just one of those features that was left out of ETW/NTW which was in previous TW games.

I agree with you, not having a prisoner system is just madness in this era.

give them the black flag
only then may we retain our independence

Originally Posted by po0tietang3366

give them the black flag
only then may we retain our independence

'No quarter to the violators of our homes and firesides'.

I'd Agree. They had one in MTW2 where you could execute, release or ransom P.O.W.s. Too bad they can't bring it back.

Despite this, I would still excecute Napoleon. He is too dangerous!

it would be nice if you can keep generals locked up to exchange them at a latter date for one of your one.

It would be cool if they expanded the prisoner system and included actual prisons to build. For example, you have the option of making a town a prison town instead of something like a university. This prison would contribute towards a national amount of maximum prisoners you are allowed to have at a time, which increases as more prisons are built. I'm sure they could find a way to make this beneficial to the player though, it could also be that if you lost a whole stack of men in a battle and then sign a peace treaty you get the survivors back, just as happened after wars.

It would also be cool if you could exile a captured National Leader such as Napoleon to a specific region instead of "Napoleon somehow managed to get his wounded arse onto a horse and rode away from thousands of redcoats and hundreds of pursuing cavalry and got back to the capital safe and sound..."

Agree. Wouldn't it be great if you could take prisoners and then have them form a new unit/regiment. Captured foreign troops were often pressed into service.

I was thinking that... cheap penal legions to throw at the enemy? They would have to have shockingly poor morale though... still, cannon fodder much?

Yes the morale would be pretty dodgy, but of course that would add to the fun. Of course if they did get thru a battle without breaking the morale would go up. Just trying to think of any real units made up of prisoners that were half decent.....

Another thing they could implement could be the use of spies in prisons.

For example. Say the enemy has a prison containing 200 of your men. You send in a spy who has a high skill level (it would have to be high for what would be achieved) and just like sabotage, he could somehow release the prisoners. If successful (and as said, it would have to be hard to pull off and rare) it is represented on the campaign map by the relevant amount of troops in question under your control. Bit like a Spartacus style slave rebellion, except they wouldn't be rebels. They would appear right beside the prison but wouldn't be able to move for a turn, thus making it easier for the enemy to put the rising down and reducing the impact of such a thing.

I like all these ideas and was wondering about this myself. More prisoners were taken in battles many times than actual losses to casualty. I would like it if you could try to surrender units on the battlefield or capture wavering enemy units. Any way of introducing prisoners of war would add a huge dimension of realism.

Ok how cool would an option be in the "Routing" stage of battles where you could order your men to bayonet/shoot wounded enemies... this would of course rely on the introduction of wounded soldiers which is yet another mechanic and again I'm finding myself going OT so I'll just stop here. Would be fun though, a Culloden style thing after the battle - it could even use the animation already there of the soldier lifting his rifle into the air before plunging it into his enemy on the floor.