Is the 300 gold ransom intentional?

[fleetothemoon]

If the ransom amount were less than what you get for a hook, you could just ask for a favour instead of money and then immediately use the favour hook to demand money. My guess would be that it wasn't meant to increase ransom money, but someone noticed this exploit and they decided to just raise the ransom to match rather than artificially prevent doing this.

This is a very good point. It might end up to be a QOL feature after all, since if ransom is less than demand payment from hook, then might as well side step the whole process.

The contentious part should be whether or not Demand Payment should operate on 6x your own income or 6x of the target's income.

I don't see an issue with "300" as a number, but I think it's probably intended to be be 6x of *target* income.


If I were to revise this, though, I would update it to the highest of:
- 6x of target's income (capped at their wealth)
- 30% of the target's wealth
- 50 gold

Doing it this way it can capture all situations
- Rando courtier/baron with 1200 gold? hell I'm taking 400 of that! But with the 30% rule it also saves the game from being too frustrating if used agaisnt a player.
- Any rando courtier with 30-50 gold somehow? 50.
- A king with monthly income of 30? You owe me 180.

The only problem would be using this on the pope, that probably ends up being 10-20k at the end game.

If this was to be changed, I imagine that the devs would only bother changing it to scale to the target's 6month income soon and nothing else since that is the simplest move.

It would make demand payment a lot weaker than it currently is, but I guess that might be OK for a first perk? I hope they would adopt something like your idea instead so that it is still fun to seek out to get a hook on or imprison rich dudes.

 

[SonnyA]

I personally don't see this as a problem as most characters can't afford the full ransom anyway in my experience. Are you getting 300 from everyone?

Not all, but with 100 people in prison it's easy to get a lot. But if people are old (50+) or sick I'm usually fine with releasing them for any amount over 100. Rather that than they die in prison for 0 gold.

Regarding the points on Hooks in this thread, if you get a hook on some Unlanded character you can't usually demand 300 gold from them. But their liege who has the gold might still ransom them for 300 gold. So there's a difference between the Demand Payment for Hooks and having 300 gold in ransom.

 

[Voy]

No, you can't... Have you played this game? You can already kidnap a ruler during peace, but keeping him as a prisoner blocks you from declaring wars on him.

Yes, you can. To give you one example, you can kidnap your liege and press a faction demand and instant-win. Faction instigators are considered the aggressor.

 

[Chlodio]

In fact you can't even propose peace while a ransom offer is considered.

How is that relevant to anything I have argued? If they can't pay the ransom, I wouldn't ransom them.

But when they can't pay the ransom anyway, what do you suggest? Peace while holding their ruler/heir indefinitely?

More hyperbole, it wouldn't be indefinitely, only until a ransom can be collected. Alternatively, you could have ransom automatically retracted from them on peace, even if it would put them in debt; events can put you in debt so, why couldn't ransoms?.

It doesn't auto-enforce anything, only if you wait for too long.

I tested it, "too long" is six months, and considering every war tends to last at least five years, this is a relatively short time.

And I wouldn't say that 300g is nothing for an emperor. In most cases that's all they have. You can disagree with me all you want, doesn't make it truer.

In 1066, Byzantines and Seljuks earn 20 gold monthly, while the Holy Roman Empire earns 13, so in all cases, it's less than two years of income, while Richard's ransom was set to be two or three years income of England. Relatively, I don't consider that to be much.

 

[Chlodio]

Yes, you can. To give you one example, you can kidnap your liege and press a faction demand and instant-win. Faction instigators are considered the aggressor.

I didn't talk about faction ultimatums, you are constructing an argument I never made... So, no you can't declare wars on your prisoners, as in using the diplomatic interaction declare wars, rejected ultimatum auto-declares war indirectly, that's clearly not something I was discussing.

 

[ptrudelljr]

It doesn't auto-enforce anything, only if you wait for too long. In fact you can't even propose peace while a ransom offer is considered. But when they can't pay the ransom anyway, what do you suggest? Peace while holding their ruler/heir indefinitely?

And I wouldn't say that 300g is nothing for an emperor. In most cases that's all they have. You can disagree with me all you want, doesn't make it truer.

So what you do is... when you hit that 100%, check where that score is coming from. If you can ransom prisoners and keep the total over 100%, you can safely do so before you enforce demands.

I was sieging a castle when an ally's battle brought the total over 100%. I waited to enforce demands until after I finished my siege... then ransomed the prisoners and peaced out.