Prisoners

Olympia: The Age of Gods PBEM (Oct 4 2000)

## 5.11: Prisoners and Looting

The winner in combat will attempt to take prisoners. The chance that a given defeated unit will be taken prisoner is proportional to the sizes of the remaining forces.

(Taking prisoners in battle and claiming loot requires many soldiers to run after the fleeing enemy. Thus, the chance of success is based on numerical advantage rather than combat skill.)

      1:1     25%
      2:1     50%
      3:1     75%

If the winning side outnumbers the defeated force by 2:1, there is a 50% chance that a given defeated unit will be captured. Defeated units which are not captured retreat from battle. If they are occupying a building or are located in a city, they may flee into the outlying province.

The victor always has at least a 25% chance of taking a unit prisoner, but no better than a 75% chance.

The victor will claim the defender's position in the location list if it is better, or will move into the defender's structure, ejecting the losing force. (The attacker may specify a flag to the `attack` order to inhibit this behavior.)

Prisoners are stripped of their belongings by the victor. The stack leader of the winning force receives all of the loot from the battle.

Some of the men in the employ of the prisoner may also decide to join the victor's forces. The chance of a man deserting an imprisoned noble to join his capturer is:

      5/(attack + defense)

That is, a common soldier [12], with an attack of 5 and a defense of 5, has a 5/10 or 50% chance to switch sides when captured. A paladin, on the other hand, has only a 5/(180+180), or 1.3% chance of joining with the victors.

Beasts (such as wolves or dragons) can never be captured in battle. Beasts are trained to obey a particular noble, and can never be forced to serve another.

Since prisoners are unable to report where they are and what they are seeing, they do not contribute to the turn report of their faction. The player's turn report will show that that a unit is being held prisoner, but little else.

Prisoners will not execute any orders while they are in captivity. Queued orders will remain pending, but none will be processed.

Prisoners when spotted appear as stacked units, marked with the ``prisoner`' string:

      Seen here:
         Kosar the Indefectible [2022], with six peasants, one archer,
         two soldiers, accompanied by:
            Alion Krysaka [2785], prisoner

Unstacking a prisoner sets them free. Kosar could free Alion by ordering ```unstack` 2785`'.

Prisoners may be transferred between units with the `give` command. Kosar could transfer Alion to Osswid [xt8] by ordering:

      give 501 2785