Ludicrous prisoner numbers!

[EatYerGreens]

Just be aware that this can make them less loyal.

Yep, that's true. You can always take the precaution of not going by acumen rating alone and paying attention to overall character traits, loyalty especially. Issuing a title can make a potentially disloyal general, who is in charge of a powerful unit, into well-behaved chap so, in turn one, dish out the ones with loyalty bonuses to those which look to need them and then distribute the rest according to acumen qualities.

The 'builder' V&V on the king will boost loyalty ratings by +1 across the board and that only takes a few years of activity if the money situation is okay.

It's near impossible to keep track of who had what loyalty rating prior to issue of a title so I can't say if removal of a title ever sends their loyalty down to lower than it was when the game started. I've never had any bother with title stripping, since the ones with good acumen often seem to be zero-rated as generals, so you can tuck them into a stack under a starred general and this effectively stops the bad apple from inciting a rebellion single handed, which can entail taking an entire stack, under their command, with them.

If in doubt, hover your cursor over the title on their info parchment and the text at the bottom will remind you of the loyalty, command or acumen bonus it bestowed on them.


There are even times when you might want to strip a title off a high acumen governor. Not because they've been bad but because you've recently got hold of a juicy province which has a higher potential output than the one they currently look after. You can't issue them that new title until you've taken the old one off them.

[yesdachi]

@ Del Arroyo: You could also just disband the unit. Not a good idea if it is a good unit but in the beginning of some games peasants and urban militia are the best governor choices because that is all that are available and they get the titles kind of by default. Later if I don’t want to mess around with getting an emissary to them I just disband them and reassign the same turn. Sometimes the $ difference in one turn is worth more than the unit I disband.

[Patron]

Actually, low ranking prisoners were usually just the people who followed the wagon trains which supported an army and other non-combatants.

Occasionally peasants were taken from their homes and forced to march in front of an advancing army, but this didn't happen very often and regulars (fyrdmen, longbowmen) were usually killed.

If there were too many prisoners to handle after a battle and they wanted to ransom them all, I think they would put a sword into each of their legs to cripple them temporarily without voiding the ransom or something. In theory, one man can hold 3000 crippled men in this manner, until his newly conquerred provincial shire riffs come to take them away.