Best way to capture kings?

[Beirut]

Baby needs a new pair o' shoes and ransoming a king is the best way I know how. Looking for tips to catch the miserable sots alive.

I usually open a can of longbows on him and reduce his unit numbers and then hit him with cavalry or troops from two sides to avoid him escaping, but there's no way to guarantee that he doesn't get killed.

Anyone have any secrets for better success at capturing kings alive?

[drone]

Just guessing, but I imagine you want to surround the bodyguard unit with low attack/high defense units, and somehow get the unit to rout. In my experience, the most successful scenario is to lure the King onto a bridge and cap both ends with spears/pikes.

The easiest way might be to isolate the King on the campaign map and capture him when he can't flee to another province.

[Beirut]

Just guessing, but I imagine you want to surround the bodyguard unit with low attack/high defense units, and somehow get the unit to rout. In my experience, the most successful scenario is to lure the King onto a bridge and cap both ends with spears/pikes.

The easiest way might be to isolate the King on the campaign map and capture him when he can't flee to another province.

Low attack, high defence unit. Interesting, Never thought of that angle.

Usually it's whatever cavalry I have and billmen. But billmen are a high attack against cavalry. Hmmmm....


Thanks. You too, Bunnyman.

[drone]

It's just a guess, since I don't really know how the capture mechanism works. It may be moot, the game might just randomly choose killed or captured regardless of the kill chance percentage. You have to get the unit routed though, which is difficult to do for a bodyguard unit.

I put a placeholder in the wiki regarding killing v. capturing when I wrote up the melee combat page, if anyone has info on this I could clean it up some.

[Martok]

Just about any time I've captured a faction leader, I've had to force his BG unit to route first. If he simply stands and fights without running, he'll usually be killed instead of captured.

Certainly the most foolproof way to capture a king, however, is (as the others have already pointed out) to leave him no province to which he can escape to. Even if a faction leader makes it off the battlefield without being caught, he'll still end up in your clutches if he has no place to go.

[caravel]

Just about any time I've captured a faction leader, I've had to force his BG unit to route first. If he simply stands and fights without running, he'll usually be killed instead of captured.

Certainly the most foolproof way to capture a king, however, is (as the others have already pointed out) to leave him no province to which he can escape to. Even if a faction leader makes it off the battlefield without being caught, he'll still end up in your clutches if he has no place to go.

+1

The problem with the high defence/low attack unit approach is that the faction leader's/general's unit will always be "winning easily" against them. So his morale is unlikely to break and he will most likely go down fighting. I find that the best way to capture a general/faction leader is to rout his other elite units around him first, and then take on his unit. If this doesn't rout him, then his morale is probably too high to rout anyway and he will probably fight to the death. In general terms if you've wiped out his army and the rest of his unit, then you'll probably end up killing him before you capture him.

[HopAlongBunny]

I'm not sure what comes into play.

In my first campaign with the Turks, I decided on a Byz first strategy because I could not get the Egyptian king to surrender. I replayed it over and over; he always fought to the death.

Now, I can do the capture almost 100% if I want. I think you need a combination of: nowhere else to go; overwhelming odds; preferably no other units intact nearby; and a little bit of luck. You will also need him surrounded; when the "great escape" is attempted you must have fast horse outside the melee to intercept.

I am pretty sure some V&V's will make some kings impossible to capture; I mentioned "luck" above because I am sure there is some amount variance due to a RNG.

Good luck!

[Saul]

First of all, the king must rout, otherwise you cannot capture him. Indeed some of the V&V (legendary leader, brave beyond belief, famous warrior, etc) make the king impossible to capture since he will fight to the end, no matter what.

You have to surround and isolate him to lower his morale. The type of troops doesn't matter. It is important to have a fast and fresh unit of cavalry nearby to send in after he retreats. The cavalry will pursue and capture him if he manages to escape.

This tactic is not 100% guaranteed but I found out it works best.

[yoyolll]

All the tactics here are good but I have to back Saul, if you manage to destroy the BGs before they rout, the King is killed.

Surround with a high tier spears unit, then chase him down with fast cavalry. If you have one unit of cavalry right outside where the fighting is going on, and a stronger (albeit slower) unit farther away where you expect him to run, you can almost always intercept him with a high success rate.

IMO, killing any faction leader is always for the better. Your general usually gets a stat boost AND you get the satisfaction of killing the scumbag. I usually kill prisoners after a battle to increase my general's dread (which I think is the most useful stat after loyalty) so the enemy can shit their pants while fighting him.

[macsen rufus]

The only 100% guaranteed method is to get the king locked into a besieged castle, then autoresolve the assault, but the isolated province with no escape route comes a clsoe second (though the game will often cheat here....). I cannot count the number of times I've chased a fleeing king over the battlefield with faster units and still been unable to catch him... and also the tightest lockdown often fails to work (triangulated spears, polearms etc).

oh, and Yoyoll - dread has no bearing whatsoever on the battlefield, only on the strategic map

[yoyolll]

Is that so? I always thought it made enemies flee easier. Oh well...*sigh*

And yes, Kings are almost impossible to capture/kill on the battlefield but auto resolving a battle is never a good idea. Unless you are a completely incompetent general, playing the battle yourself will always yield a higher win rate.

[macsen rufus]

I used to think the general's dread had a battlefield effect, and really it should, I'd love to see the enemy quaking before an 8-star 'butcher', but unfortunately not.

As for the autoresolve - I never do that for field battles, the only use for it in my book is this one situation. Playing a siege assault yourself usually ends up killing the king, but when it's autoresolved, he seems always to be captured - just one of those quirks that may come in handy

[Martok]

The only 100% guaranteed method is to get the king locked into a besieged castle, then autoresolve the assault

I have to admit that I often forget that. I'm so used to personally commanding siege assaults (unless I enjoy truly overwhelming force) that it doesn't usually occur to me that auto-resolving more frequently nets me (valuable) prisoners. Thanks for reminding me of that, macsen rufus; I'll definitely have to keep that in mind for future campaigns.

Is that so? I always thought it made enemies flee easier. Oh well...*sigh*

I used to think the general's dread had a battlefield effect, and really it should, I'd love to see the enemy quaking before an 8-star 'butcher', but unfortunately not.

To be fair, in the early days of MTW, it was in fact a common mis-perception among a lot of folks -- to which it must be admitted I was one of -- that dread had an effect on the battlefield. It was only later on that one of the CA guys specifically stated that it did not, and that dread only affected the loyalty of a general/governor's province.

I too concur that a general's dread rating *should* have an effect on an enemy army (after all, who wouldn't run from someone known for literally drinking the blood of their enemies?), but sadly this was never implemented in the game.

[caravel]

With the current model, enabling dread on the battlefield would be unwise, as generals are too strong in MTW anyway. Armies are held together by a good general, having no real valour in their own right and when the general dies the army withers away. This is highly unrealistic as it is. Adding dread would have overbalanced this further, lowering the AI enemy's morale to an unacceptable level. As ever the player could exploit this by training up good high dread generals, whereas for the AI, obtaining a high dread general would be a matter of luck.

I also don't think that in real terms, coming up against a high dread "Martok the Butcher" would have frightened the enemy in this way. They would be less likely to want to be captured by said general knowing that a lifetime of toil and hardship in the camel stables awaited them... I'm sure they'd fight to the death to avoid such a fate.

Perhaps a general's dread could have been used as a morale modifier for his own troops? As it is, the general's command stars give valour but the morale bonus is separate and only comes into effect on the battlefield in proximity to the general. The dread stat could have been used as a modifier for this. The amount of dread being relative to the amount of the bonus? Martok the Butcher's own men would be sure not to rout while under his command. Dread could also have a "see-saw" effect with 0 giving no bonus, 1 to 5 giving some, but 6+ starting to take it off again, i.e. the men not wanting to fight for such a murderous fiend.