Tactics for prisoner farming for profit

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Ok so far I've had the most success with loading my army up with sarleon knights (I've got around 80 of them atm) and ordering them to use only blunt weapons. This results in slightly over half your army attacking while just below half are left standing there doing nothing. The upside to this is that you will capture *every* enemy soldier. And so, using this to attack weaker armies I know half my force can take I can basicly vacuum up prisoners to fund my armies.

Atm it's still not very profitable, I'm in my mid 20's lvl wise with only about 90'ish army size (I'm speccing int and holding out for qualis gems to make a super-duper pop char).

Just tried this farming vanskerry raiders, very easy to snap up 20-40 prisoners in a couple of minutes with no losses. Any other ideas on how to improve or what to farm for more success? The jatu are more valuable prisoners but every sarleon costs 500 merely to recruit not to mention train and replenish and those jatu lance charges will result in increased casualties as the 2 handed maces are *terrible* to counter them.
 
to deal with half of your party sitting there and doing nothing you can create a group called "blunt" and change your blunt units to that group, then just hit the appropriate number to select that group and order them to use blunt only.
 
No, HunterAlpha, from what I understand he said, HALF the Knights spawn with Blunt weapons, Half the KNIGHTS, without. It is random, he can't do what you are suggesting.
 
I found this out not too long ago...and it worked spectacularly for me for a bit.

If your faction is at war with another and you are the marshal...order lords with prisoners to stay at your castle or town. They will dump their prisoners there and that will allow you to take them out and sell them later. I've gotten up to a hundred prisoners before just by telling a few of them to go to my castle, made tons of money too
 
I tend to use the Red Brotherhood guys if I need prisoner-taking troops. From what I've seen, They almost always carry a mace (and a crossbow, but who cares about that).
    -Easier to obtain than Doomguides
    -The higher-ranked ones are stronger than their civillian/sheriff counterparts
    -Easier to obtain than Knights (Early game, at least), AND they have a better chance at starting off with a mace rather than the 50/50 chance for knights.
    -Red brotherhood patrols are plentiful, so you'll end up rescuing them from time to time from other groups or taking them as prisoners
    -Dude. They're red brotherhood.

Only real problem I have with them is that sometimes the crossbow-carrying ones will like to act like they're cavalry archers and use the crossbows instead.
 
Sarleon Men-At-Arms are cheap, easy to obtain, fast to train and replace and spawn half the time with two-handed hammers. Load them up like there is no tomorrow and keep about 20 cavalry. Do not use the cavalry to fight as they are expensive to replace just ride them back and forth to draw attention from your targets and when fighting starts break them up a bit.

Best option is get around 120+ of them and go hunt 20 person groups of 'adventurer parties' and rogue knight groups. They're common near Ethos, which is right near Sarleon. Smaller groups and safer terrain than farming Jatu and they reap a big pile of coin. Faster, less fuss, less risk than trying to gather rare and expensive units.
 
El-Diablito said:
Ok so far I've had the most success with loading my army up with sarleon knights (I've got around 80 of them atm) and ordering them to use only blunt weapons. This results in slightly over half your army attacking while just below half are left standing there doing nothing. The upside to this is that you will capture *every* enemy soldier. And so, using this to attack weaker armies I know half my force can take I can basicly vacuum up prisoners to fund my armies.

Atm it's still not very profitable, I'm in my mid 20's lvl wise with only about 90'ish army size (I'm speccing int and holding out for qualis gems to make a super-duper pop char).

Just tried this farming vanskerry raiders, very easy to snap up 20-40 prisoners in a couple of minutes with no losses. Any other ideas on how to improve or what to farm for more success? The jatu are more valuable prisoners but every sarleon costs 500 merely to recruit not to mention train and replenish and those jatu lance charges will result in increased casualties as the 2 handed maces are *terrible* to counter them.

How did you manage to get so many sarleon knights so early at lvl 20? I'm lvl 32 and top-tier-cavalry is still hard to aquire. As a merc i'm training adventurers eventually to heros. So far i have ~15 hero adventurers. Do you use special techniques to farm sarleon knights?

@topic
I used prisoner-farming earlier, but currently i emphasise deadliness of my troops to get the upper hand in battles against more numerous foes. I have enough money and need xp.
I used blunt weapons and companions for that.
 
Idk bout you but personally I work in the trainning grounds plenty of times it trains units up quickly plus you can always help villages monthly every one of the village that is within a days travel that way you can maintain your relationships and get higher tier troops up faster. That way it makes your knight building army quicker.
 
I've always thought Warband was a bit wonky with the way it handles injuries. Would make more sense if "lethal" weapons weren't always lethal and blunt weapons were sometimes fatal. It's not like a warhammer wasn't every bit as lethal as a sword in reality.
 
unfringed said:
I've always thought Warband was a bit wonky with the way it handles injuries. Would make more sense if "lethal" weapons weren't always lethal and blunt weapons were sometimes fatal. It's not like a warhammer wasn't every bit as lethal as a sword in reality.
Certainly true. But that's one more variable that needs to be applied, and cutting down on the variables makes the system work better. I'd say that we should be happy we got to where we are.
 
ms_ts_2007 said:
No, HunterAlpha, from what I understand he said, HALF the Knights spawn with Blunt weapons, Half the KNIGHTS, without. It is random, he can't do what you are suggesting.
The solution to this problem is to send your whole cavalry force charging with blunt weapons, then to use the " - " command to select the nearby soldiers who are doing nothing after the initial charge and tell them to charge with any weapon.
 
Ok here is some guidelines i always use so i get lots of prisoners and lots of gold :3

Pick a faction you want to be a merc of or plan to be with for quite some time, follow their armys around and join the fight that are pretty obvious wins, or help them out.

take the lords prisoners and all that comes with it, and reqruit all the prisoners they had on their end so that you can get some high lvl troops.

once the gold start clinking in on a daily basis because of how many lord ransoms you get "Counts,Barons,jarls" sometimes gives 20k gold for ransom, woosh :3

but be careful about who you try to ransom and capture, always keep an eye out who owns what city so you can build later without having to spend 100 days trying to get them not mad at you.

and once you got all the enterprises going, just sit there with your mercanary for a while and keep doing this, until you have a few 100k gold, "i did this until i had 1 million denars, and it was well worth it once i started my own kingdom"

So that's usually how i get gold in this game at prisoner department ;P

 
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