Capturing Generals/Troops

[Yefo]

A few times now, i have captures troops/generals. However, I don't really know how I did it or what to do afterwards...

1. How do you capture troops/generals?
2. When the sounds says "You have captured the enemy general, guard him....", it just means don't lose the battle in order to keep him captured, right?
3. Ransom vs. Release vs. Execute: What should I do when?

[Johannes Kurkuas]

1. Striking Down Generals/Troops, who are retreating or fighting to death, captures them.
2. Correct
3. Depends on your Strategic Situation, but here some rules:
- killing prisoners, gives your General "Fear" traits
- releasing prisoners, gives your General "Chivalry" traits
- killing prisoners weakens your Relations with Nations of the same Religion
- the AI normally refuses ransom offers, because it collects no Money
- if you capture prisoners in a Campain to take a settlement, never Release them,
Because they will retreat to the settlement

Hope this helps ...

[Loco Mike]

1. When a unit is routed & running away, everyunit you "kill" of that unit once routed is captured. Generals there a chance to capture. It's not always 100%.

2. Yes, if you lose the general is free & other prisoners are freed.

3. -Execute, kills them all but General gets dread traits & your reputation with other factions gose down. More so with the Pope if its a fellow christian army.
-Ransom, gives the other faction chance to buy back all of them. If they cant/wont pay, then they all die. Your reputation is not harmed.
-Release, free them your General gets chivalry traits, your reputation gose up too.

I mainly ransom most of the time & only execute if my army is far from my lands & surrounded by overwhelming numbers in enemys land. Even then mostly op for Ransom, if i know they cant afford it.

Generals captured give a huge profit & faction/hair leaders are a mint if captured.

[Highlander of Scotland]

also in my current campaign as scotland my reputation went up to reliable from mixed as I ransomed over 40 000 in florins of milanese troops including faction heir and leader, leader retreated to milan and was killed by my king next turn who is currently fighting venitian and milanese stacks with only one stack of pikes

[Silverheart]

1. As have been pointed out already, all soldiers who are killed while routing or "fighting to the death" count as prisoners.

2. Also a repeat, but yes, you have to win a battle in order to keep the prisoners. All prisoners you´ve taken are freed if you lose the battle, including generals.

3. This one depends on situation and circumstances.
Release means all prisoners are let go without ransom - it has the benefit of giving your faction a better reputation and improving your generals´ chivalry, but is best used only if you A) want to improve such stats or B) if the enemy are in a situation where the released prisoners will still disappear (i.e. if you conquer a settlement, released prisoners will vanish. Same thing happens if the enemy army has lost a huge percentage anyway, or if the prisoners are really few) and you are not in need of extra money.
Ransom means that you demand money for the release of the prisoners. It´s good because you can get money out of it, and because you don´t get a reputation hit if the enemy doesn´t pay. Use this if you are in need of extra money or if you don´t mind fighting the same soldiers again.
Execute means that you simply kill the prisoners without any hint of mercy. It means you will get a reputation hit as well as increased dread for your general.
It is, however, good if you have captured troops that are valuable or tough, and you don´t want to risk facing them again in another battle.
I almost always use this against Mongols and Timurids, for example - they have so many troops, that you need to wear them down at any chance you get!

[Maklodes]

I threw together a few thoughts on the factors that might go into the "execute, ransom, release" trilemma.

Number of Captives:

The crucial divide is between 80 and 81. If you have captured 80 or fewer prisoners, then your decision will have no impact on chivalry or dread, and only a small impact on reputation. If you've captured 81 prisoners or more, you gain CaptorChivalry or CaptorDread, and the change to reputation is larger.

Captured generals:

Execution or release of enemy generals/family members does not affect chivalry or dread, except insofar as generals are people who count toward your total. (So if you've captured 79 soldiers and 1 general, you gain no chivalry from releasing, but if you've captured 80 soldiers and 1 general, you gain a point of CaptorChivalry, just as if you'd captured 81 soldiers. At least, that's my understanding; I'm not totally sure.) However, generals do have a big impact on your reputation. The additional reputation increase/decrease from generals is as much as the difference between 80- prisoners and 81+ prisoners. Also, generals are worth a lot of money if ransomed.

Your General type:

If you have a dreadful general, you (usually) want to increase his dread and avoid increasing his chivalry. If you have a chivalrous general, you (usually) want to increase his chivalry and avoid increasing his dread. If you have a neither chivalrous nor dreadful general, you can choose which direction to go in. If you have a captain-lead army, there's no way to change chivalry/dread, so you have to make the decision on other factors.

The Enemy General?:

This is perhaps a rather esoteric factor, and perhaps not worth thinking too much about, but if the enemy general survived the battle, and you ransom his troops, the ball will be in the enemy general's court. If there are 81+ prisoners, the ransom is more than 1001+ florins, and the enemy general pays up, then he'll gain a point of RansomChivalry, which increases chivalry and his troops' morale. If there are 81+ prisoners, the ransom is 4999- florins and the enemy general refuses to pay up (but the treasury has enough money), then he'll gain a point of RansomDread, which increases dread but reduces the morale of his troops. So a chivalrous general who pays off the ransom gets stronger (higher chivalry and troop morale). A dreadful general faces the dilemma of either getting chivalry (i.e., reduced dread), or gaining a dread boost but at the expense of lowered morale among his own men.

Strategy:

The first thing to understand is that releasing prisoners intrinsically sucks. It can provide other benefits that make up for the suckage, but having the enemy soldiers back in action with no recompense for you is counterproductive. However, the degree to which is sucks depends. Releasing 3 peasant archers doesn't suck much. Releasing 80 dvor cavalry sucks a good deal more.

As such, if you're going to release at all, you want to release when the benefit/cost ratio is maximized. The benefit from releasing small number of prisoners is maximized when your number of prisoners is near 0. If you have a very small number of very low quality prisoners -- like three peasant archers -- you might release them for the small reputation boost. (Note that even dreadful generals can safely do this without risking gaining chivalry traits.) Ransoming is also fine. Execution is perhaps a bad proposition here -- you gain just as much ill-will as from executing 70 troops, but the small number of captives wasn't much of a threat. Your (aspiring) dreadful generals also won't gain dread from executing small numbers.

As the number of troops nears 80, releasing looks like a worse and worse option. The small reputation boost stays constant, while the costs of release go up. If you have 70 captured DFKs or something, ransom or execution look like better options. Chivalrous generals can also execute without gaining dread or losing loyalty if there are 80- prisoners, although there is still the small reputation hit.

Once the number hits 81, the reputation effects are boosted, and releasing/executing also gives chivalry/dread traits. My rule of thumb is that if there are 81+ prisoners, never use a chivalrous general to execute, and never use a dreadful general to release. Ransoming is still fine.

As the number of prisoners climbs past 81, releasing once again looks like a worse and worse choice, as the benefits remain constant and the costs climb. Releasing 100 prisoners isn't so bad, and might be worth the reputation/chiv boost. Releasing 800 prisoners is pretty rough, so even with a chivalrous general I'd probably ransom.

Also, I'd say that if you have a general with maximum CaptorChivalry -- the "merciful champion" trait -- I'd perhaps switch to ransoming, since the trait can't be increased beyond that. Although there are still the reputation benefits, and one could build up a "buffer" of CaptorChivalry so that you could execute on occasion without reducing it, although with such a high-chivalry general execution risks reducing loyalty (via DiscontentGeneral) anyway.

[Steward Denethor II]

Also units shot by missile weapons while retreating just die, they don't become prisoners.

[painter]

That's a good writeup, Maklodes. +rep

Releasing a large army can actually be an attractive option if it would be easy to defeat that army again, as not only you might earn positive reputation for your faction, you may also earn more chivalry and your men would also gain more experience. The only problem is that you can't predict where the enemy will reform their army at. If they withdrew to a settlement, a follow up siege can be more difficult.

[Silverheart]

Releasing a large army can actually be an attractive option if it would be easy to defeat that army again, as not only you might earn positive reputation for your faction, you may also earn more chivalry and your men would also gain more experience. The only problem is that you can't predict where the enemy will reform their army at. If they withdrew to a settlement, a follow up siege can be more difficult.

If the battle took place within a region controlled by the enemy, they can be expected to retreat to the nearest settlement.
If the battle took place outside of the enemys´ land, they will only retreat to inside the nearest border of theirs or an ally of theirs.

[painter]

If the battle took place within a region controlled by the enemy, they can be expected to retreat to the nearest settlement.
If the battle took place outside of the enemys´ land, they will only retreat to inside the nearest border of theirs or an ally of theirs.

Thanks for the tip!

[jackbush]

I don't think I've ever captured a general. Lots of them have been killed in battle. Is there anything I can do to capture rather than kill?

[Silverheart]

I don't think I've ever captured a general. Lots of them have been killed in battle. Is there anything I can do to capture rather than kill?

Overwhelming his unit, or getting them isolated before taking them out - really, you need to demoralize him into fleeing. This is a lot harder wth family members, of course, but they can get scared with the same methods as other units.

[Sitalkes]

Releasing prisoners may be hard but it is the quickest way to vastly improve a general's chivalry (and your reputation). You have to decide whether to follow the path of chivalry or dread at the start of the game and stick to it. Chivalry may seem harder but defeating the same army over and over again also improves your general or gives you opportunities to appoint new generals. Try to attack with approximately equal or inferior numbers also if you follow the path of chivalry, even if it means leaving some troops behind. I thought the chivalry path would be more difficult to follow than the dread path but because the genearals improve so much and high chivalry helps with town management so much I ended up finding it easier. I think for the Turks, though, you have to follow the path of ransom, as they are always using inferior troops and short of money and if you capture a family member you can get 9,000 or more for him. Also their leader is a dread leader, which causes unrest amongst chivalrous generals.

[Sar1n]

You have to hit him with melee attack when he's fleeing.

Capturing general is rare, you have to force him to flee through your unit or have unit of light/medium cavalry standing by to intercept, as general units are heavy cavalry, so they're quite fast. If he is in fight with your own cavalry it's easier since apparently fleeing units are slightly slower than same type units intercepting them.

[jackbush]

Thanks.