Prisoners escaping every single day

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Akora

Veteran
So I have about 10 prisoners from my various campaigns and it pisses me off that I have to save the game every day because if I don't, inevitably 1-2 will escape even though I have a prison tower in my castle. Is there anything else I can do, because this is getting annoying. Thanks!
 
Also, can anyone tell me whether or not it's worth it to take the honor hit by refusing to sell the lords back to their faction? Seems the only way to make progress in war is to capture these guys, and it sucks that I can't keep them as long as I want. Going through all the trouble to capture them and then getting screwed over by the game mechanic sucks.
 
Khakan said:
If they are not faction leaders, just sell them back when you're offered ransom. That save & load thing ruins the game.

Doesn't a faction's ability to make war have to do directly with how many lords they have? I thought the number of armies they could field had to do with the number of lords they have active.
 
That would be the case, seeing how enemy armies are led by lords. I'm also under the impression that they won't start campaigns so often, if at all, when the marshall(usually king/khan) is imprisoned.
 
Akora said:
Khakan said:
If they are not faction leaders, just sell them back when you're offered ransom. That save & load thing ruins the game.

Doesn't a faction's ability to make war have to do directly with how many lords they have? I thought the number of armies they could field had to do with the number of lords they have active.

Nahkuri said:
That would be the case, seeing how enemy armies are led by lords. I'm also under the impression that they won't start campaigns so often, if at all, when the marshall(usually king/khan) is imprisoned.

Both correct, but for 3000-5000 denars per ransom, I can field a better army to destroy the enemies when I see them next.  Besides, ANY time lost when the Lord cannot raise an army is to your advantage, so I always sell them as soon as I get an offer, and just maintain a very aggressive battle strategy so that I always have 1-2 prisoner if possible.

Or you could head over to TheMageLord's thread on tweaking the game and see how/if the prisoner escape rate can be altered.  So far I think he's only addressed how likely you are to capture them after a battle, but he may well be able to help them stay prisoner.
 
If you want to modify the escape chances, the trigger that handles it is in simple_triggers.txt. So open that up and look for
48.000000  9 1 3 936748722493063486 648518346341351424 50 6 3 1224979098644774912 648518346341351443 648518346341351501 2133 2 1224979098644774913 30 4 0 541 3 1224979098644774912 135 1 2133 2 1224979098644774913 5 3 0 1 3 936748722493063486 1224979098644774912 1224979098644774913 3 0
The 50 is the chance of escaping while you have them in your party. The 30 is the chance of them escaping while stored in a castle or town without prison tower. The 5 is the chance of them escaping from a place with a prison tower built. The 48 is the number of hours between doing this check.

You could change any of that, but this isn't just from the player party - this is from everyone, so don't just zero out the chances or lords will NEVER get away from npcs and your map would end up pretty empty after a while. If you wanted to build prison towers you could just set that 5 to a 1 or a 0 or something and make escape from prison towers extremely rare, and I think only the player actually builds prison towers so unless you build one and then give the castle to another lord they will only be under your control. Just be aware that if you change the 50 or the 30 it will make all lords stay in captivity longer.

As far as the honor thing, if you want to keep them indefinitely just eat the hit - the only thing honor affects is how lords like you, and it makes sense that honorable lords would get mad at you for keeping noblemen imprisoned indefinitely.
 
TheMageLord said:
As far as the honor thing, if you want to keep them indefinitely just eat the hit - the only thing honor affects is how lords like you, and it makes sense that honorable lords would get mad at you for keeping noblemen imprisoned indefinitely.

Why should your honour be impugned when you are at war with the nation whose leaders you had the good fortune to capture? Is winning dishonourable?
 
TheMageLord said:
As far as the honor thing, if you want to keep them indefinitely just eat the hit - the only thing honor affects is how lords like you, and it makes sense that honorable lords would get mad at you for keeping noblemen imprisoned indefinitely.

Thanks Mage. Do you know how to edit the time in between requests to ransom? I don't mind "taking the hit" but when I have like 3 offers per day it gets extremely annoying.
 
The thing that annoys me about "honor" is that it's really not useful for anything. Shouldn't enemy  lords let you go if you've let them go in the past?  Or shouldn't "I don't want to fight you" actually work if your honor and relationship is decent...

Meh.  Letting lords go seems like the ***** option in M&B. All you get is a kind word  and a axe in the skull next chance they get.
 
I often let them go if my relation with them is -5 or worse. Makes it easier to play nice after they are defeated and decide to change sides.
 
Akora, what's your prisoner management skill?
I've really only had prisoners escape when my prisoner management was at 0. Though that may just be me.

It really is infuriating to have the little buggers jump ship after fighting tooth and nail for that 1/5 chance to get them. Ergh.
 
Those last two castles with 15 lords each in them can be a real drag. Lords are tough at the top of a wall.
But your country will get almost none of the enemy lords to populate your enhanced sized new holdings if you dont suck up to the captured enemy lords. It is a silly dynamic where no one in this world of warriors respects pure deadly war making ability and wants to be on the winning side.
 
Meh, if you really don't want ransoms I guess I'll look up how to get rid of them :smile:

Open up scripts.txt and find
offer_ransom_amount_to_player_for_prisoners_in_party -1
22 23 2 1224979098644774912 1 2133 2 1224979098644774913 0 1651 2 1224979098644774914 1224979098644774912 6 3 1224979098644774915 0 1224979098644774914 31 2 1224979098644774913 0 1656 3 1224979098644774916 1224979098644774912 1224979098644774915 1507 1 1224979098644774916 540 3 1224979098644774916 2 2 2173 2 1224979098644774917 1224979098644774916 2136 3 1224979098644774918 0 100 4 0 542 3 1224979098644774917 21 0 2147483680 2 1224979098644774918 5 2147483679 2 144115188075855924 1 2133 2 1224979098644774914 0 2133 2 1224979098644774913 1 2133 2 144115188075856346 1224979098644774916 2133 2 144115188075856347 1224979098644774912 2060 1 864691128455135365 3 0 3 0 2133 2 72057594037927936 1224979098644774913
The 5 here is the chance for any given prisoner lord to have a ransom offered on any given day (it checks once a day). It's actually that number +1 chance in 100 (since it's a less than or equal to, and the range is 0 to 99). If you change it to -1 it should never ever offer ransoms, or if you make it 0 it will be a 1 in 100 chance.

This could also obviously be used to increase the chance of ransom, if you wanted to turn it into a cash machine :grin:


Heres the timer which triggers this script too, in case you want to change frequency of it triggering (simple_triggers.txt):
24.000000  10 2147483679 2 144115188075855924 1 1 2 936748722493063478 648518346341351424 31 2 72057594037927936 0 2133 2 1224979098644774912 648518346341351501 6 3 1224979098644774913 648518346341351443 1224979098644774912 541 3 1224979098644774913 7 360287970189639680 1 2 936748722493063478 1224979098644774913 31 2 72057594037927936 1 2133 2 1224979098644774912 0 3 0
The 24 is the # of hours between triggering the above script.
 
Hunterh said:
Why should your honour be impugned when you are at war with the nation whose leaders you had the good fortune to capture? Is winning dishonourable?

That is not really the Medieval mindset. War is something that peasants are expected to die for certainly. But higher than the call of patriotism is the privilege of nobility. In modern warfare we have the Geneva convention to stop the worst atrocities in what is still an inhumane event. In the Middle Ages the worst atrocity would be the disintegration of the Feudal system which allowed the nobility to live pretty well. By treating captured nobles well you were ensuring that a system endured that was far more important than any temporary set of hostilites.
 
Laksmi said:
Hunterh said:
Why should your honour be impugned when you are at war with the nation whose leaders you had the good fortune to capture? Is winning dishonourable?

That is not really the Medieval mindset. War is something that peasants are expected to die for certainly. But higher than the call of patriotism is the privilege of nobility. In modern warfare we have the Geneva convention to stop the worst atrocities in what is still an inhumane event. In the Middle Ages the worst atrocity would be the disintegration of the Feudal system which allowed the nobility to live pretty well. By treating captured nobles well you were ensuring that a system endured that was far more important than any temporary set of hostilites.

Not that the "medieval mindset" applies in Calradia, but if your victory should not threaten the sovereignty or stability of your neighbours, your prisioners should eat well in their towers and not be pawned back to lead armies which diminish your own influence. Lords may even switch factions if their original kingdom is destroyed in 1.003.

If they want their generals back so much, they need to pay an amount which adequately compensates us for losing that leverage in the war. Or better yet, trade those precious lords back for the cost of half of their fiefs, the remainder to go to the broker for graciously allowing that disgraced lord to return to court.

Of course I am simplifying things, but let us remember the game as well as history.
 
kaeldragor said:
Akora said:
Khakan said:
If they are not faction leaders, just sell them back when you're offered ransom. That save & load thing ruins the game.

Doesn't a faction's ability to make war have to do directly with how many lords they have? I thought the number of armies they could field had to do with the number of lords they have active.

Nahkuri said:
That would be the case, seeing how enemy armies are led by lords. I'm also under the impression that they won't start campaigns so often, if at all, when the marshall(usually king/khan) is imprisoned.

Both correct, but for 3000-5000 denars per ransom, I can field a better army to destroy the enemies when I see them next.  Besides, ANY time lost when the Lord cannot raise an army is to your advantage, so I always sell them as soon as I get an offer, and just maintain a very aggressive battle strategy so that I always have 1-2 prisoner if possible.

Or you could head over to TheMageLord's thread on tweaking the game and see how/if the prisoner escape rate can be altered.  So far I think he's only addressed how likely you are to capture them after a battle, but he may well be able to help them stay prisoner.

But if you capture a king you'll get over 10000 denars
 
When the enemy faction still has a decent number of spawn points, you might as well sell their lords off, since money is useful.  But when they're down to their last town, every single defeated lord will respawn here, and gather troops.  There is no realistic way to attack a town with 500 troops and the ability to replace 100 casualties per day.  Money is worthless in that case since you can't raise an army beyond the size and balance limitations of the game.  I finally managed to defeat the Nords the other day after hammering on Wercheg for a week, and that was with only 6 lords in residence; the rest were locked away in my dungeons.
 
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