Siris, you're a sick, sick man.

Well, i think its true that there was less of a ransom culture in the ancient period - also MTW was a bit silly, as you would have only bothered ransoming knights and nobles in real life - footsoldiers/commoners would just have been killed (also depended on the period - in late medieval as wars got more attritious, they didn't even bother ransoming nobles - they often just killed them.)

I think in RTW it would have been cool to be able to use captured family members as bargaining tools in diplomacy though.