Every enemy you kill on an expedition is a worker you throw away. In Pax Autocratica, the fastest way to grow your colony’s workforce is to subdue hostile soldiers, drag them back to base, and slowly convert them into loyal citizens. The trade-off is that captured enemies fight back and resist, and elite soldiers take far longer to break than ordinary troops.
Quick answer: Shoot an enemy with Capture Rounds (press F) after lowering their health, move them from your captive holding into a Prison Cell, then interrogate them once a day using Indoctrinate or Electrocution until their will breaks. Once they are ready, recruit them at the Victory Square.
Crafting Capture Rounds at the Weapons Resource Center
You cannot capture anyone with normal weapons. Capture Rounds are the special ammunition that transfers a weakened enemy into your captive holding, and you make them at the Weapons Resource Center inside your base. You can also loot them from resource nodes while exploring Elysia, but crafting your own supply is far more reliable.
There are four types of Capture Rounds, and each tier has a higher chance of bagging an enemy than the one before it. Early on you only have the basic version, which costs two Tendril Logs per craft. Better rounds unlock as you upgrade your base and acquire the blueprints for them.
| Detail | How it works |
|---|---|
| Where to craft | Weapons Resource Center in your base |
| Basic recipe | Two Tendril Logs per craft |
| Round tiers | Four types, each with a higher capture chance |
| Better rounds | Unlock by upgrading your base and getting blueprints |
| Alternative source | Looted from resource nodes across Elysia |
Tip: Stock up on Capture Rounds before you leave on an expedition. The basic ones are cheap but weak against elites, so bring extras. Crafting mid-run also wastes time, and the longer you stay out, the higher enemy levels climb, which makes captures harder.
How to capture enemies during Expeditions
Captures only happen in combat, so you need to be running an Expedition. Once you are in a fight with Capture Rounds equipped, the process comes down to weakening the target without killing it.
Building prisons and assigning cells
Captured enemies sit in your captive holding until you move them into a Prison Cell. If you have not built a prison yet, you will not lose anyone you already caught, so there is no rush to have one ready before your first successful capture.
Unlock the prison blueprint through Building Research, then place a prison and assign each captive a cell. Upgrading a prison raises its inmate capacity, but the upgrade is resource-heavy early on. A cheaper approach is to build several separate prisons and dismantle the extras later once you no longer need the space.
Interrogating prisoners to convert them
Once a captive is in a cell, you interrogate them to wear down their will until they are ready to join you. There are two methods, and you can use each one once per day on a given prisoner.
| Method | What it does |
|---|---|
| Indoctrinate | Talk to the prisoner and try to win them over with your ideals until they come around and join. |
| Electrocution | Apply shock treatment to break their will and force them to submit. |
A good routine is to start with Indoctrinate for the first two or three days. This tells you how resilient a prisoner is, and from there you can mix in Electrocution when talking alone is too slow. Elite enemy soldiers take the longest to convert, so expect to spend more days on them.
You will know the process worked when the captive is finally ready to join. At that point, head to the Victory Square and hire them, and they become a working member of your colony.
Exiling or executing prisoners you do not want
Not every prisoner is worth converting. If you want a cell freed up, you have two ways to get rid of a captive. Exile simply lets them go. Execution removes them permanently, but it requires you to build an Execution Gallows first. Executions raise fear among your own soldiers, which lowers the chance of them going on strike.
Between capturing, jailing, converting, and deciding who lives, the whole loop rewards patience. Bring enough Capture Rounds, keep your squad from finishing off low-health targets, and treat interrogation as a multi-day project, and each expedition can send back a steady stream of new citizens instead of corpses.
