AI War:Captive Human Settlements
Do I Gain Anything From Holding Captive Human Settlements?
Q: Captive Human Settlements seem to be more of a penalty than anything else. Is there a reason I should capture these?
A: You gain +45/s of both metal and crystal, plus you gain the planet the settlement is on (since you had to take the planet in order to capture the settlement). However, make no mistake, capturing these is mostly a negative thing. There are benefits to capturing them, but their cons mostly outweigh their pros. We felt like this would more accurately represent freeing a captive population in this sort of military situation -- suddenly having civilians in the middle of the warzone is rarely a good thing, despite the fact that freeing captives is the morally upright thing to do (although, conversely you could make the argument that they are relatively safe under enemy control for now, and if you win the war they will all be freed).
From a gameplay standpoint, the main function of these settlements is to make capturing a specific planet less desirable. This is a special unit for Homeworlder AI types, but they also show up at random on some planets in other games. Sometimes you have no choice but to capture one of these settlements, or maybe you want to free them on moral grounds, but otherwise (strategically-speaking) it's a good idea to avoid them. The purpose of them, therefore, is to create challenging decision points for the players on planets which would otherwise just be rotely captured.
