Effect of taking enemy king prisoner ?

[kittehs]

Does capturing the enemy king have any effect ? I recently captured Sultan Hakim and noticed that their offensives grind to a halt. It's like nobody was running the place anymore. Even though they had tons of lords they never even defended their own territory as I took city after city. Same for Khergits, I took out Sanjar Khan and while their Marshall Brula Noyan is still in action he seems to utterly suck at the job.

 

[rhaeloth]

the question is how well developed were you on this escapade.

owning the crap out of them tends to leave them like wounded animal.

 

[annallia]

It has been my experience that capturing the enemy king (or any lord for that matter) makes no real difference in the game.

There mgiht be something in there like if your enemy had no marshal and you captured the king they cannot name a new marshal while in captivity (don't know if this is true just guessing as to the OP's experience) but honestly I practice catch and release with lords. Unless I have a task to capture one or they are really pissing me off I just let them go and get the relation boost.

 

[Tripida]

Lieges usually will have armies with strenght from 1/3 to 1/5 of the kingdom army, so defeating one is kind of harder blow into lords military kingdom rating.
The best will be to defeat marshal so kingdom will be paralysed for few days while playing Mount & Feast In the city.

 

[bakters]

I think they can't name a new marshall while in captivity.  While I'm not absolutely sure about it, it never happened in my games. 

Beside that, you take out the biggest army in a kingdom, which makes quite an impact on enemy AI.  AI lords always think about themselves, so they pursue enemies weaker than them and run from enemies stronger than their current army (plus some modifiers for being aggressive/cautious), but what they don't do, is take into account a combined strength of several armies.  So once you take out the biggest army, other lords in the pack will get pursued more often than before.  They will not be able to finish a siege, a village raid, and even in a field battle they will have higher chances of ending up being outnumbered. 

On the downside, they won't go feasting in the middle of the war...

 

[Filou]

Some say that while captured the king can't name either a new marshal nor assign fiefs, but I'm really unsure about either.  If it's true, then capturing the king and the marshal will leve the faction rather cripled in terms of organised fighting power.

What is certain is that capturing the marshall forces the faction to re-elect a new one, which means that you have a few days before they organize any kind of campaign.