Capturing Units

[MarineBIoloGisT]

How do you make units surrender to capture them I feel like I never get this to happen but it happens to me a lot on higher difficulties

[Ferenc7519]

if you find out tell me im never able to use them. in the reading it said u must capture 10 units to field capture units but i never get enough

[Complex Strategy]

In order to capture equipment you must force units of that type to surrender. Units surrender when they attempt to retreat and are unable to. The most common way to make that happen are by completely surrounding a unit (major rivers and other tiles that the unit can't move onto don't need to be occupied). The other main way is by getting heroes with the envelopment trait which makes units surrender when they would otherwise retreat. You will then be awarded the strength of that unit as captured equipment (so making a 5 strength point tank surrender rewards 5 to your stockpile pool or whatever you want to call it) or double that if you take the general perk spoils of war at the start of campaign. Units that surrender also give you some prestige.

If you get 10 of any 1 unit you are able to purchase that equipment and add it to your core force as a unit. Otherwise you can view how many when you go to purchase units. Currently it seems like this is pretty underwhelming for a couple reasons.
1. You have to pay full price for the captured equipment.
2. The units you capture often are mostly weaker or only slightly better than the standard German stuff.
3. You often have extremely limited replacements since you need to capture more equipment to reinforce any of those units.
It all adds together to just make captured equipment lackluster from my experience even with spoils of war (and granted I think spoils is 100% needed to even have a chance of using captured equipment). Maybe we'll see a buff that makes it more worthwhile to use it like the units being cheaper or maybe getting some extra captured unit added to your pool so you can easier use those units.

[ZiffyHead]

If a unit can't retreat it will surrender.

Page 83 of the manual (link on the store page) explains retreating.

Very basically if you inflict 66% of a unit's unsuppressed strength it retreats.

There is also a hero that depletes all movement points.

I put it on an arty and capture lots of things that way.

[Tigga]

Ha Ha If all else fails read the manual ... except sometime the manual is wrong ...

But 95% chance it isnt.

[Tigga]

It depends what you make surrender if it is a strong high value unit you will earn very good prestige so it isnt effectively costing you anything to buy it .. its just like it auto sells it for you and you have the option to buy it back for the same amount of prestige that you earned.

[karolinerna2000]

Strange that you need to pay full prestige points for captured equipment. It should be almost free. You even have the drawback of not being able to reinforce it during a battle unless you have huge amounts of it.

[Green Knight]

Guys, you DO NOT pay anything to buy units with captured equipment!

When you capture something, you get the prestige value of what you capture.

You can use that prestige to buy the captured equipment - or some standard German stuff.

There is even a perk that doubles what you capture!