Will there be a ransom option?

[A Very Super Market]

You can't even take prisoners in naval battles, so definitely not.

[LAST.MAN.STANDING]

I like these ideas, but I think the slavery option is more historically accurate. Victorious armies often sold surviving enemies into slavery, and of course, nearly always looted the baggage trains and bodies of the dead. This has always been one of my gripes about the TW series (not that any other game series comes anywhere close to TW's realism)....but historically speaking, victorious armies were most often funded more via plunder and spoils of victory in the fireld than by continuous resupply and payment from the homeland. I'm constantly fighting campaigns in foreign lands, with not enough money to recruit reinforcements. I win battle after battle, only to end up with no troops to garrisson the ground I take.

What I'd LOVE to see in EBII is an influx of cash with each victory, with the more enemies killed/captured, the more money raised. Weapons and armor were worth an incredible amount of money in the classical period, not to mention the personal effects, baggage etc. captured by the victors. The option to sell the captives as slaves could replace the ransom option. So many realistic possibilities would be opened up with this. Armies could be self-sustaining in the field via the spoils of victory, with the continual cash to hire mercs, etc. And what would be REALLY awesome is the ability to up-armor units using captured armor/weapons from the battlefield...although I don't see the ability to do this without being in a settlement. As far as I understand, the buildings in a settlement are the ONLY way to upgrade weapons/armor/retrain.

But the SLAVERY instead of RANSOM as well as money from looting the battlefield seem almost necessary improvements if they can be accomplished.

[A Very Super Market]

What you're describing is essentially the "Spoils of Victory" mod.

[LAST.MAN.STANDING]

Never heard of it, but if they included the above suggestions, bravo to them....but...it's not EB. I want all the bells n' whistles EB puts in PLUS the ability to claim the spoils of the field. What good is cake if you can't eat it too, right?

But seriously....someone from the EB team should look into the idea, and not just 'cause it's my pet concept, but because it truly would add an excellent level of realism to the game. I'm no modder by any means, but it seems to me that changing the ransom option to selling slaves would be relatively easy. The influx of cash from stripping the dead/looting baggage train might be another story...but then again, events like grants of cash from councils in M2TW must be triggered by something, right? Why not have those events triggered by victories and simply rewrite the text to state "spoils of victory, 2000 mnai, [etc etc]" or some such thing?

[A Very Super Market]

It's an add-on mod to EB (Maybe Vanilla, I'm not sure)

I get your point, but you can play EB and have what you're describing with it. It's in the EB mod modding forum.

[LAST.MAN.STANDING]

It's an add-on mod to EB (Maybe Vanilla, I'm not sure)

I get your point, but you can play EB and have what you're describing with it. It's in the EB mod modding forum.

Thanks...I'll look it up as a possible sub-mod for my gameplay until EBII debuts. I was mainly focusing on suggestions for EBII.

[MerlinusCDXX]

I have an idea on how some of this may be implemented.
1, Make the options texts read (Release prisoners-no change necessary, Ransom-sell prisoners to the slave trader, Execute-take prisoners as state slaves or send them to the mines)
2, Have the "refused ransom" text read "the slave trader did not accept this lot of prisoners, so they have been sent to the mines".

I know this is not perfect, but it would provide a more realistic (according to the time period) way of presenting the hardcoded options that we are dealing with.