Prisoners should not be able to escape for a little bit after battles

Users who are viewing this thread

Totalgarbage

Sergeant Knight
During the mid-to late game, whenever I fight a large army near a town, go defend a besieged fief (or an army en route to besiege a fief) and win the battle, I take tons of prisoners, a higher number than my party's prisoner capacity more often than not. However, since the battle happens ever so slightly outside of a town, the disorganized penalty and the high number of prisoners crippling my party speed cause a huge number of prisoners to escape, even if the battle just happened meters outside of the town 5 seconds ago. This causes a lot of potential profit to go to waste, so I'm proposing newly captured prisoners being unable to escape for a limited time, like 1 day, even if I have an absurdly large number of prisoners compared to my party size. They are wounded troops anyways, there should be some time necessary for them to "recover" enough to mount an escape.

As for Lord prisoners, their escape chance roll shouldn't start until they recover to 100% HP.
 
Last edited:
I think, the devs should make it impossible for AI to put ordinary troops in a dungeon. It makes no use, and each dungeon is always overcrowded with them which makes you being unable to put some lords into a prison which is not yours.

So, the only choices are either drag them with you, which makes you slower plus they have a higher chance to escape, or sell the lords, which doesn't help you win the war.

Make AI lords sell their prisoner troops instantly and make them put lords only on a dungeon
 
I think, the devs should make it impossible for AI to put ordinary troops in a dungeon. It makes no use, and each dungeon is always overcrowded with them which makes you being unable to put some lords into a prison which is not yours.
Yes, I don't even think you should be able to imprison ordinary soldiers.

Either ransom, free, or execute ordinary soldiers. All putting soldiers in prison usually does is give your enemy their own troops back more often than not for free.


I have head supposedly that keeping lots of Veteran Soldiers prisoner reduces the spawn rate of volunteers and their quality. Though how anyone would verify this is beyond me.

Ideally there should be separate prisons for Lords/Soldiers. Nobles are the only ones worth imprisoning in my experience. It's extremely annoying to not be able to stuff Lords in jail because it just happens to be full of ordinary troops too.

During the mid-to late game, whenever I fight a large army near a town, go defend a besieged fief (or an army en route to besiege a fief) and win the battle, I take tons of prisoners, a higher number than my party's prisoner capacity more often than not. However, since the battle happens ever so slightly outside of a town, the disorganized penalty and the high number of prisoners crippling my party speed cause a huge number of prisoners to escape, even if the battle just happened meters outside of the town 5 seconds ago. This causes a lot of potential profit to go to waste, so I'm proposing newly captured prisoners being unable to escape for a limited time, like 1 day, even if I have an absurdly large number of prisoners compared to my party size. They are wounded troops anyways, there should be some time necessary for them to "recover" enough to mount an escape.

As for Lord prisoners, their escape chance roll shouldn't start until they recover to 100% HP.
It used to be much worse. Heck it was so bad even putting them in the dungeon they'd escape in a day or two.

I think any character, player or Lord, should have to get to 20% health before they can attempt to escape (think this is case for Lords). I don't really have a problem with captured Lords escaping so much, a lot of it is determined by their Roguery, and there are perks that drastically lower prisoner escape chance anyway.

Again main issue is not being able to throw them in dungeons, where their escape chance is extremely low or none existent - thank goodness.
 
Totally realistically though, would that not be the exact best time and opportunity to escape? When your forces are still in disarray after a battle? No organised prisoner area yet, no place to keep prisoners under guard, etc.

I think it makes total sense that they should escape then. What I find annoying is when they manage to escape when locked up in a fortified city's dungeon. Now that I would like fixed.
 
What I find annoying is when they manage to escape when locked up in a fortified city's dungeon. Now that I would like fixed.
Yeah thats ridiculously gamey. Was fine for an early niche sandbox game and necessary to keep AI lords afloat but all these years later - its not that hard to start creating Legacy AI families when a ruler is taken and put in a cell. Matter fact itd be a lot more fun if they had real personalities and imprisoning one for the game would create a power struggle among various factions that could be manipulated. Just capturing and imprisoning an enemy just to see him out a few days later because RNG -and amass another army to re-grind the same lord is a cycle of non-fun ad nauseum
 
If I remember right from the last time I looked into that code, being locked in a dungeon doesn't even decrease escape chances. Though governor perks will (up to -95%). The game actually does cheat in the player's favor by cutting escape chances from the player's party or player clan fiefs in half (though it's probably not very noticeable), but the amount that troops contribute to keeping prisoners in a party/fief levels off really quickly, around 80 troops for the minimum chances before perks iirc.
 
Last edited:
I think, the devs should make it impossible for AI to put ordinary troops in a dungeon. It makes no use, and each dungeon is always overcrowded with them which makes you being unable to put some lords into a prison which is not yours.

So, the only choices are either drag them with you, which makes you slower plus they have a higher chance to escape, or sell the lords, which doesn't help you win the war.

Make AI lords sell their prisoner troops instantly and make them put lords only on a dungeon
if they made the game realistic that could work, instead I lean more towards the fiefs auto-ransoming troops after some time if it fails to recruit them - keeps the core mechanic as to why they are kept in dungeons while also introducing a profitable system for both player and AI that slowly empties them. Also rids us of another useless layer of micro-management nuisance.

Now if these systems were made realistic, first of all, bandits would likely be "enslaved" as forced labor - common during the entire history of humanity. Nobles (noble troops) would be kept in dungeons with noble lords - because they were Nobles (duh). And commoners would be sometimes offered recruitment, sometimes ransomed if wealthy enough, and sometimes also put into forced labor / sold as slaves. Totally possible to simulate that without much legwork, yet it would likely cause uproar from woke zombies. - advantages of having that would be bonus to construction if you had a "labor camp" from prisoners (which should be kept separate from their dungeon systems) - slaves would sell for fat profits and ransoms would depend on troop relative wealth (similar to what we get from the broker with type vs tier). Basically they could make a slave camp attached to fiefs which's separate from the dungeons, you deposit the commoners and bandits there and the game automatically selects, tries to recruit, tries to ransom and than if both checks fail (RNG) the troop's enslaved as forced labor. Basically the additions would be 2 containers, 1 for 1st layer where RNG decides if they can be recruited or not, than if they can be ransomed or not and lastly sees if it can be sold as slave or not - past all 3 checks they are moved to the 2nd recipient which would be the labor camp - than add a cap to it's effects or make death-rate high on those with "sold into slavery" in combination. Done.
 
Last edited:
Ask Henry V about what to do when your army is disorganised after battle and you're worried about prisoners escaping or fighting back.

We're lucky they didn't build a prisoner rebellion mechanic into the game as well.
 
keeps the core mechanic as to why they are kept in dungeons while also introducing a profitable system for both player and AI that slowly empties them.
That would've been nice, and I wouldn't mind this mechanic as well, but the probles is that the AI stacks some tremendous amounts of prisoner soldiers (700-800 ppl in one dungeon) and they keep dragging even more every day, so autoselling 9-10 soldiers a day hardly affects anything. The player cannot put any prisoners in a cell and has to drag them along until they escape.
 
Ask Henry V about what to do when your army is disorganised after battle and you're worried about prisoners escaping or fighting back.

We're lucky they didn't build a prisoner rebellion mechanic into the game as well.
it'd be deemed "too complex™" and never shed even a line of code in the development
That would've been nice, and I wouldn't mind this mechanic as well, but the probles is that the AI stacks some tremendous amounts of prisoner soldiers (700-800 ppl in one dungeon) and they keep dragging even more every day, so autoselling 9-10 soldiers a day hardly affects anything. The player cannot put any prisoners in a cell and has to drag them along until they escape.
it's a matter of time frame for that. What I generally do with prisoner situations is to move to closest town and empty troops in the broker - if I can't carry as many than I simply ignore them on the capture screen and pick nobles only... Not THAT much of a problem - my issue with the prisoner is that dungeons are never emptied, and as such a mechanic to manage that automatically with relative speed would do wonders...
I mean, so much click simulator micro-management in the game already, I ain't got mood to go to my own fiefs to empty the dungeons on brokers - really annoys me.
 
Besides lords, I only take T4+ prisoners. The rest is not worth slowing me down further and their ransom is peanuts. I would appreciate a mod done by Block ,one that creates deserters after battle + a retreating group of defeated but still loyal troops, implemented in standard game. I would gladly exchange those dull omnipresent looters with diverse groups of deserters/marauders which are where they are because something (battle) happened ☝️
 
Back
Top Bottom