So with the problem of taking enemy, an army that doesn''t take prisoners suddendly becomes a dreadful opponent... but it makes your soldiers fight even more bravely since they have really nothing to lose.
In one of SunTzu''s sayings, he advises to go to war without that much luggages since most should be taken from the enemy if the general does his job correctly.
Little considerations like this wouldn''t add necessarily to the "fun" factor, but rather force the players to ask themselves what is good or bad, rather than "kill everybody", or "hold as long as you can, kill everybody", or "follow the path, and kill everybody", you get the idea
Is it better to take prisoners ? (enemies will more likely surrender if they now that they''ll be treated correctly, e.g. the Germans losing war and praying they would be captured by Americans rather than Russians ...) Or kill everybody ? (take prisoners is nice, but you have to feed them, unless you use them to do some work like, hey ! *harvesting* resources
). And if you are in a context where your credits are dependant on a superior force, such as a gouvernment, you get very interesting stuff like the problem of people''s opinion. You would end up with soldiers that do humanitary job (the paradox of ONU "soldiers").Well, you catch the drift.
I guess you should have called the thread, "the meaning of War" ?
youpla :-P
ps : a Geek Wife ??? God, now that is a rare bird indeed
