Knights and Knaves

I will post this here, and on the TW Forum:

I have resisted implementing features, for the most part, since taking over as project lead.  However, on the airplane to Florida I had a moment of clarity... just kidding, but I did come up with two features that I want to discuss with the community.  Among you there are coders, artists, and various other knowledgeable members... and at the very least you are all enthusiasts (Enough so, to be posting here on this forum).  I would appreciate any technical feedback, or comments of any kind.  This is not a promise of features but the entertaining of a whimsy while I was delirious and 3 miles above ground.

I was considering the spiral of armies in PoP 3.x which leads to roaming armies of a thousand soldiers or more, that may not have been intended to do so.  This phenomenon is mostly caused by chance, but helped along by how prisoners work.  In order to prevent abuse, players were not allowed to recruit soldiers over a certain level.  However, I have a proposal that might go much farther than that and even redefine the current PoP formula.

So here it is, climb into my brain for a moment, its raining in there.

Rather than capturing prisoners found on the battlefield, I would like to strip captured soldiers of name, title, and ability.  All captured soldiers simply become “prisoner”s, with minimal stats and no equipment.  Knocking a higher level unit out results in a larger range of prisoners gained to represent the units retinue, or relative difficulty to capture.

Prisoners can function in a variety of ways:
Can be recruited into your party in a very weak tree of soldiers, less significant than factional equivalents.
Sold to a slave trader for a set amount of gold.
Released to a charitable organization in exchange for honor or renown.

There are two more game specific functions that are going to be generalized here.
Exchanged for unique soldiers not recruitable by the player anywhere else at staggering ratios. Such as, one high level unit which you all know and love costing a trade of thirty prisoners or some such thing; or perhaps trading for some low level units featured prominently in PoP 4 as a minor faction which has a home base.
The second is to be used as a resource in the aid of player centered additions to the game (Thats all that can be said about that.)

Feature two, that I was mulling over is as follows... Knights.

Prophesy of Pendor is rather Knight centered, in fact there are units called squires and knights, but none of them really have the impact a knight should have.  I would motion that knights, as they level up have access to more of a retinue.  I do not know if this is possible, which is why I am posting it here.

Knights should be knights, not upgraded from squires, they are representative of an elite force that has land and title.  These units are hard to acquire, and expensive.  Therefore, a level 1 or tier 1 knight, however you see it, should take up at least 2 population spots in your army, and when the battle begins the knight should spawn an additional unit called a squire, squires can be foot soldiers and other sorts of units can spawn as knights level up.  The point is, if the knight lives and the squire dies its no big deal, some other peasant will be picked up for the next adventure.  However, if the knight dies you lose access to the unit and his retinue.

The retinue could vary and produce an incredible amount of difference from one to the next, it also brings a utility and gravity to the unit themselves.  I do not even know if this is possible, but figured it was worth broaching the topic here to uncover any hidden advice held by the masses.