Final siege results

[Dgold]

When a fort/town falls after a siege, there is simply a message in the log. It would be nice to have a final report:

- attackers storming losses
- defenders losses (killed and captured)

Do the defenders surrender to a man, do some escape, or does it vary due to various combat factors? Can Leaders escape? Can defenders be granted honours of war and allowed to leave with (or without?) their weapons.

Thanks.

[PhilThib]

Details for fort surrenders (including an Honor of War option) are on our task list...but not implemented yet

At the moment, when the fort is captured by siege, all units inside it are eliminated.

[Pocus]

a doable upgrade would be to have the value in replacements of surrendering units added in the RPL pool, and only if there is a european leader on both side (forget about honnors of war if indians are involved!). This can make in the 1.05 patch.

[[FS] Feltan]

Interesting concept, but tricky to implement in a historical fashion.

Remember, Burgoyne surrended at Saratoga with over 5800 British and German troops. Well, in fact, it was not a surrender but a "convention." The convention being that the troops would be allowed to return to Europe and not come back. An Honor of War agreement.

However, Washington lobbied congress because he was aghast at the agreement. He figured, correctly, that the 5800 would move into garrison duty in Europe and 5800 garrison troops would be detached for service in America. In fact, that was the British plan when the heard of Burgoyne's agreement.

The American Congress nixed the agreement. While Burgoyne himself was sent to England, the 5800 soldiers moved into camps in Massachussets, then Virginia and then Maryland. At the end of the war, only 1500 returned to Europe. The rest had deserted and blended into the population, or, surprisingly, a number joined the Continental army.

The British were outraged. Understandably so. Burgoyne probably would not have surrendered in an unconditional fashion to Gates. The duplicity of the American congress, in the eyes of the British, probably also saved Burgoyne from the same fate as Admirial Byng twenty-five years earlier.

So......how to simulate honor of war in a game?

That is a tough one, because the "results" are largely the same (i.e., a military force is eliminated). In real life, it was done to spare bloodshed. However, in game terms, the incentives are different. The superior/beseiging force may have an incentive (both in game terms and real life) to avoid taking losses and to speed surrender. However, in game terms the defender is going to lose the force anyway -- so why not delay as long as possible, and/or maybe take a few enemy with you?

There has to be an incentive for the defender that is historically accurate. Replacements, as Pocus suggests, may work......but the gamer would still be tempted to let small garrison starve or die to delay the attacker. A large garrison may hold promise for more replacements, and thus provide incentive, but historically such an agreement coud (as noted above) be overturned post-surrender.

You may just want to leave things the way they are for BoA. Any garrison surrendering could simply be assumed to have either been moved into prisoner camps or granted honors of war and taken out of the conflict.

Regards,
Feltan

[Pocus]

or a random percent, from 0 (!!) to 100% of what you should get from the RPL values. 0% means that you were fooled (men as POW or worse, like what happened when indians attacked columns of prisonners), and 100% meaning that the agreement was entirely respected.

[[FS] Feltan]

Yep, and maybe a nice interface that offers you the choice of surrendering (with honor of war promised) when beseiged or hopelessly outnumbered in open combat. Take your chances....

Regards,
Feltan

[epsilon]

And what about the officers, which when captured where most of the time exchanged with enemy of about the same rank. Probably better than seing them randomly sent to some remote station after a siege sucess.