POW's

[Vease101]

I have never played a wargame which kept stats for 'Prisoners' taken during battles or offensives. In most cases this is because the game system requires you to completely wipe out a unit in order to take its hex or move beyond the ZOC but in real warfare units usually surrender well before they are decimated. In WW1 Von Moltke had misgivings about the whole 1914 German Offensive because although his armies were advancing in accordance with the Schlieffen Plan they couldn't bring a decisive action - 'Where are the prisoners?' he famously asked. This lack of prisoners caused him to alter the design of the plan to try and bring the French and British to the critical battle he wanted, with the unfortunate result of First Marne.

Maybe its just 'fluff' but when you read about Barbarossa for instance a substantial amount of Soviet losses were actually captured rather than killed or MIA. It would be nice to have those rare units that do surrender 'led into captivity' and some stats for this.

I used to enjoy the R T Smith CCS wargames because unit strengths were actually given as numbers, rather than strength points and its much more realistic to see that a unit has been reduced from 8000 to 6418 rather than from '10 to 8'. If someone says that the argument is to abstract 'losses' as much as possible to sanitise the whole idea that the game represents actual human beings being slaughtered then why do our units get credited with 'Kills' and the best 'Killers' awarded with medals?

[monkspider]

There are a lot of war games that use real numbers instead of strength points, like say the Panzer Campaigns series. Panzer Corps is generally a lot more abstracted (and I appreciate it's abstraction, honestly).

Would you like to see POWs represented in the game? I think POWs could be represented in something like War in the East which is an ongoing grand campaign (and maybe they actually are) but in Panzer Corps where battles are highly abstracted and divided into independent, autonomous battles, it wouldn't make much sense IMO.

[Vease101]

Ok, I can see that keeping track of POW's in Panzer Corps wouldn't fit with the overall feel of the game but does anybody know of a game that DOES show this as a stat?

[El_Condoro]

I've always thought of the exploding icons in PG2 and now PzC as including: kills, desertions, low morale (perhaps suppression), and prisoners. 'Kills' is just a dramatic term to include the less dramatic stuff, too. The map gets pretty cluttered at times, as is, so I don't think POWs, as a general inclusion, would add much to the game.

Having said that, a scenario designer could incorporate them as an action:

1. Destroy a named enemy unit (the unit that will give the POWs)
2. A friendly unit, set to appear as the same type as the one killed in 1., appears by a trigger set to fire when the enemy unit in 1 is destroyed (the POWs are gathered)
3. The player must get the triggered unit to a zone for either prestige or as a victory condition (the POWs are escorted to captivity)

Variations of this are possible now.

[MartyWard]

Ok, I can see that keeping track of POW's in Panzer Corps wouldn't fit with the overall feel of the game but does anybody know of a game that DOES show this as a stat?

Grigsby's War in the East does. It tracks just about everything somewhere, hell it tracks the number of pilots lost in training missions each turn!

[Kerensky]

I would say causing units to surrender is very VERY highly encouraged in Panzer Corps, especially on the harder difficulties. Whenever possible, I always prefer to cause unit surrender instead of killing units because when you play with 15 strength Allied units, on every single allied unit, that is too much strength to 'kill' time and time again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cde0xufdi3k

However tracking of surrendered units... that's an interesting idea. As I said above, surrender is very much encouraged, but it wouldn't help to further promote this by actually keeping track of this. Perhaps something for the future, if and when other improvements to causality tracking is implemented?

[Vease101]

Ok, I can see that keeping track of POW's in Panzer Corps wouldn't fit with the overall feel of the game but does anybody know of a game that DOES show this as a stat?

Grigsby's War in the East does. It tracks just about everything somewhere, hell it tracks the number of pilots lost in training missions each turn!

Just a ridiculous game, like the guy who does 8 out of 8 reviews said why couldn't you just issue orders to the HQ units and have their component elements act accordingly? Nobody has time to shuffle a thousand units around per turn and wait for the AI to do the same, its like pulling teeth. I haven't tried the Combat Ops Battle of The Bulge game but it looks like the kind of operational level mechanics that might be interesting.

[VPaulus]

I would never call it ridicule. I know people that really enjoys to play wargames with that kind of detail and micromanagement.
Only it doesn't appeal to everyone.

[axlroselm]

War in the East is an excellent game. After PzC, War in the east is my favorite. The only problem is 300+ manual .

[MartyWard]

War in the East is an excellent game. After PzC, War in the east is my favorite. The only problem is 300+ manual .

It's far to complicated for my old brain. I bought it but never really understood or enjoyed it.

[Vease101]

War in the East is an excellent game. After PzC, War in the east is my favorite. The only problem is 300+ manual .

It's far to complicated for my old brain. I bought it but never really understood or enjoyed it.

I don't want to rag on something thats off topic, but seriously, how much time and effort are people really willing to spend on a wargame? I have maybe 12-15 hours a week I can devote to playing something and thats going to take nearly a year to play the full campaign in War in The East, assuming it goes to the last turn - a year of my life to play a single campaign? No thanks.