How to Capture a Leader?

[Tomcat]

Any hints please on how to capture a leader so you can ransom him back for that large amount of florins you get for the ransom?

Just started a new Campaign on Expert playing the Byzantines for the first time. Trying to follow Katank's suggestion to trap and ransom the Egyptian Sultan in Antioch. Well, I have him trapped in the Antioch fort but I cannot capture him, he gets killed every time - eventually!

I have re-played this siege battle several times now. If I command it myself, I always kill the Sultan so there goes the ransom , he never gets captured. If I autocalc the siege battle, the Sultan always seems to be captured and I get all the florins I need to build up my provinces for many years to come - which then takes away much of the challenge !

Is this a bug or is there a trick to capturing a leader like this without auto-calcing? I hasten to add the Sultan dies in melee fighting, not by an arrow.

I do not want to autocalc a battle just to get a particularly favourable result when I intend to play the whole campaign fighting battles myself. Seems like cheating to me. Not saying autocalc generally is cheating as the strategy part of the game, rather than the battles, is what some people play MTW for, especially for a fast campaign. Just don't want to have to autocalc a battle just to get a particular result, ie the ransom!

Tomcat

[lugh]

Ive found this to be the case aswell, the moral bonus the besieged army gets when you storm their castle means they rarely flee so theirs little chance to capture them.
The only time I managed to make a unit that was any good flee was when I had a load of artillery with me and shot the unit to pieces, it was a Prince/Kataphraktoi, they just ran around the inside of the keep until I broke the gate and munched him with some Royal Knights.
So Id say the only way to capture hjim is to break him, maybe get some archers behind him, flank and rear charge him, anything else you can think of to lower his morale.

[EatYerGreens]

Prior to the siege battle, if your WT/BF's are giving you enemy init info, see if the Sultan already has the 'Captured' V&V. It's either that or the 'Traumatised' one.

If you read the decription, it's the one where it says that they will kill anyone (meaning anyone on their own side) who suggests surrender and it mentions that they get a sizeable morale and valour boost (the individual, not the entire unit).

What this means is that you could have them completely surrounded by your units but they will refuse to rout (high morale), even if the rest of his unit runs away and they will fight to the death - high valour means they can pull this off single-handedly, with some degree of success and killing some of your troops, until exhaustion finally gets the better of them. Hence no opportunity for capture.

Come to think of it, in the few siege battles I've done in MTW, it always seems to be a fight to the death, with no prisoners ever taken. Very reminiscent of STW sieges.

To tell the truth, I don't know how ordinary prisoner capture is worked out, let alone generals and faction leaders. It doesn't seem to be anything you have direct control over, put it like that.

Sometimes, I've sent cavalry after routers, follow them on the camera and see the routers being cut down but in the battle stats, the cav unit is listed as 0 kills, 'n' prisoners captured. So what you see happening during the battle isn't necessarily reflected in the final results. Not all those corpses are dead, evidently.

And the mind boggles when you have a unit with 17 men left by the end who have somehow manged to drag 64 prisoners around with them for much of the battle. Perhaps we're lucky that there's no 'encumberance' factor tied to prisoners being held by units, like this.

[The Grand Inquisitor]

It seems reasonable with an historical perspective for the troops in a siege to fight to death if you attempt to storm a castle. In the mediaeval period (and beyond), a garrison was given the opportunity to surrender. If they chose not to do so there would be no mercy shown to any prisoners - all could expect to die should the castle fall.

So if you want to take prisoners then you have to do on the field of battle. If you invade a province with overwhelming force, the enemy will retreat if possible. Therefore consider invading with an army that is about the same size as the defending force. The AI seems to place a bigger emphasis on numbers than on quality when deciding whether to retreat or not. Compact and bijou is the way to go.

[Louis VI the Fat]

All my siege battles have been fights to the last man standing as well. Never captured anybody this way.

In your particular situation, you could try to abandon Antioch so that the sultan will leave the fort. Then re-invade the next turn, making sure you're not outnumbering his forces by too much, so he will face you in an open battle

[mfberg]

Autocalc in those seige battles is the only way I've ever captured anyone. You can capture Kings without autocalc if there is no castle or bordering province for him to run to and you get him to run off the map. Trying to capture a leader by running them down just ends up with them dead.

mfberg

[Goofball]

You can only capture enemies if they are routing. Defenders in a siege will never rout, as long as they are within the castle walls. So, the only way to capture the King would be to somehow entice him to sally forth and fight you outside of the castle. Or autocalc the battle. Kind of dumb, I know. On the flip side, sieges are a great way to increase your general's personal valor, because all of the enemy will fight to the death...

[Tomcat]

Thanks for all your comments. Seems like this is a genuine known problem in MTW. All of you seem to agree it is virtually, if not totally impossible to capture a leader inside a castle's defences when conducting the siege yourself, yet the autocalc, in a very high proportion of circumstances, does capture the leader in a castle siege.

I know from practical experience and it has also been discussed recently on this forum, autocalcing a castle siege often gives better results than you can usually achieve commanding the attack yourself, especially if you do not have siege equipment. The total reverse to autocalcing battles in the field where you can usually do far, far better yourself than the autocalc.

So I guess this is another aspect of the autocalc where it does a less than stellar job compared to what happens when you fight the siege attack yourself.

Tomcat

[EatYerGreens]

It seems reasonable with an historical perspective for the troops in a siege to fight to death if you attempt to storm a castle. In the mediaeval period (and beyond), a garrison was given the opportunity to surrender. If they chose not to do so there would be no mercy shown to any prisoners - all could expect to die should the castle fall.

This has happened to an entire (walled) town on at least one occasion - one of the English Civil wars but I forget which one, possibly War of the Roses. Women and children included, I might add.

It's basically down to the fact that the attackers offer an easy, not to mention bloodless, way out and the refusal leads to a battle which will likely be far more expensive in terms of casualties for the attackers. It's not as if it's sanctioned by the 'chivalric code' or anything, its just that anyone in their right mind is unlikely to show mercy to the person who was shooting at their mates through an arrow slit, or dropping boiling oil on them just minutes before it was all over. The fact that you had opportunity to speak to them beforehand just makes it worse. Field combat is far more impersonal.

The dilemma for the defenders is if they were to hand over such a valuable defensive tool to the opposition and were set free, they'd then be regarded by their fellow countrymen as a mixture of coward, collaborator or even traitor. For some, death in combat or eventual execution as a prisoner seemed the better, more honourable option.

There's even the risk they are taking that the surrender option is just a cruel trick - the attackers get the castle without a fight and execute the lot of them afterwards. (But if this ever happened at all, historically, I doubt it would ever have happened a second time, once the story had spread).

It also may have had something to do with whether they regarded their opponents as being just like themselves - paid to do a job and their leader's bidding - or if they genuinely hated them with a passion and wanted to take the opportunity to kill as many of them as possible before they met their own, inevitable, end.

[lugh]

During the Second Civil War (1648), Ireton went with Fairfax to suppress the Royalist uprising in Kent, and then to the bitter siege of Colchester in Essex. When Colchester surrendered, Fairfax controversially ordered the execution of the Royalist commanders Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle. Probably instigated by Ireton, the executions were calculated to deter others from taking up arms against Parliament and to set a precedent for the execution of Parliament's enemies.

This was the nearest I could find on execution post-surrender. Ireton was Cromwells right hand man. It does seem that at least some morality was exerted when the enemy surrendered.

[EatYerGreens]

This was the nearest I could find on execution post-surrender. Ireton was Cromwells right hand man. It does seem that at least some morality was exerted when the enemy surrendered.

That's reassuring. Presumably raising arms against Parliament was regarded as treasonous, in much the same way as raising arms against the monarch had been, previously?

I suppose, thinking about it logically, the 'con-trick' idea would only serve to undermine the whole surrender gambit, which one would hope to be able to pull off several times over, to save your own troops from having to attack numerous fortifications, so I see it as unlikely to ever be have been played out.