▌PRISONERS OF WAR ▌
This game attempts to be historically "accurate" with available armies, buildings, and such for a given historical age/era in time.
Throughout history, military forces captured, and even enslaved, fallen enemies and in earlier ages, used these people to then fight in their own armies. Current military forces routinely capture Prisoners of War for interrogation or imprisonment.
This idea could boost Neighborhood battles moreso, be incorporated someway into GvG and definitley boost up PvP activity.
I propose an addition to the age, old "sabotage/plunder" button when defeating another player's city. Name it what you wish, but add another option to "capture POW" as another choice available.
The rules, benefits, disadvantages, and risks involved can be debated, changed and tweaked if implemented, but my idea is basically thus:
Attack and defeat a defending army, you have the option to capture some of that player's population.
The amount can be debated, but for the sake of argument let's say 10%.
A stone aged player with Huts would potentially lose *1* person off one of their huts and an icon could be added to the building (like the Plunder one now)
A contemporary player with waterfronts could lose 181 population.
Limits could be imposed on this for the sake of fairness to all in how many buildings could be captured so players could still play sucesfully or no limit at all. A limit of maximum 10 buildings would equal 10 maximum lost population for said Stone aged player..
For the defeated player, this loss of population means that, if they do not have available population left (i.e. negative population), they cannot add further buildings that require population until they add more or "free" their POWs (see below of freeing POWs).
For the victor, this could go multiple ways depending on the views of others and how they wish to implement:
1) Gained POWs are added to victor's city population giving them a boost in overall population that they could use for any reason that population required. Same as the defeated player, however, if a tyrant uses this feature as a way to have added population, if they are to *lose* that population (see freeing POWs again below) and then go negative, they too cannot build any further buildings requiring population and as a penalty, be forced to *remove* buildings that they used captured population to build.
2) Captured population could be housed within Alcatraz Great Buildings to be re-used as military troops for the victor much like Iron-Middle age armies captured, ensalved, and reused POWs for their fighting forces in real life. Penalties for using this feature could be implemented as wel such as:
Victor loses captured POWs already used in battle, player is forced to recruit new military units and immediately loses them in repayment to the other player.
Again, much like in real life special forces strike teams sent in darkness to free an enemy POW camp and rescue imprisoned countrymen and women, there should be a retaliatory feature implemented as well.
My idea is that this is a permanent loss of population (again, possible maximum loss of 10 citizens for that Stone aged player) until the POWs are free'd and returned to a players city. Currently, we have the option in Event History to watch a replay of attacks on your city and also a "retaliate" button.
1)Either there could be an additional button in event history allowing one to attempt to free their lost POWs or...
2)Open this up to all players wanting to be a hero and add another button in additon to Sabotage, Capture, and now Free POW available in a defeated players city after battle. With this option, any given player could lose population in captured POWs, but also any given player could retaliate and free a tyrants entire POW camp returning lost population to all players affected.
How this would be included in GvG, I have not thought of quite yet... Perhaps if XX population is adding to a guild's Alactraz buildings, these POWs could be used for free defense in a given sector. If POWs are lost, those defense armies are immediately deleted and the above rules apply?
With an implementation like this, I would expect there to be a number of "..... ......" type tyrant players to take full advantage and grossly boost their population, military, and/or defense.
There MUST be severe penalties put in place for the common player to be able rise up against this evil tyrant and bring him before a global court of hero type players with their special forces strike teams to be tried, judged, and his/her city/guild/sectors be overtaken and burned to the ground for his/her mistreatment of all.
I forsee neighborhoods rallying together and guilds banding together in a new/fresh way to boost their cities, their guilds, and their number of sectors in GvG, not to mention another angle in attack/defense strategy as well if successfully implemented into GvG.
Other than all that, are we going to be able to hunt, trap, capture, feed, and/or intereact in any way with all these little critters running around the outskirts of our cities in a future update?!? If not, no reason to add them if we cannot. Add that too