[Way of Life] Getting people of jail — please don't make it only through Intrigue foc

[NewbieOne]

Here's why:

Suppose that one month you choose a focus — Rulership, War, whatever.

But next month they carry off your relative or vassal. Or even next year. And they make her into a concubine.

If the Intrigue focus is the only one way of getting people out of jail etc., then you may need to wait like 4-5 years.

And that would be just too artificial, making the game look formulaic and limiting immersion by very clearly invoking and giving exposure/focus to a mechanical restriction as opposed to a substantive/thematic/relevant reason (e.g. time to prepare the jail break).

So please enable other ways of access to jail break and/or the ability to pay ransoms for such people (especially prisoners who aren't concubines — e.g. your chaplain or spymaster caught on a mission).

Please don't ignore this.

I'd like to ask fellow posters to at least post a +1 if you agree, because I'd like to show that this is an important and valid problem, not just some nitpicky detail that only one dude cares about.

 

[Jorlem]

Seconded, and I was actually coming to the forum to make a thread on this myself.

Here's a idea for a solution I had:

What if certain events could give you the option to clear your focus and select a new one, even if you couldn't normally. So, the event that notifies you that your relative has been captured could have an option that clears your focus, or sets a flag that disables the five year cooldown on switching focuses.

 

[Polskers]

Agreed to this entirely. Narrowing it to just intrigue focus is very much railroading and narrow minded, I feel.

+1

 

[zharliette]

I agree. What I personally imagine is a situation where you have "ask to rescue a prisoner" option in diplomacy menu. So you could ask your spymaster to help you out on these matters. Same goes for other intrigue options.

Perhaps it could be done thusly: when you open up the diplomacy menu there would be "Intrigue" button with the same sort of option menu like granting titles or declaring war but instead you could choose things like kidnap and rescue or spy on. And it would make the spymaster - if he/she agrees to do it - to perform those actions as usually. But limit it to one errand at the time. A councillor sidemission, if you will. Spymaster's agreement would depend on opionions of you and the chosen target, their own general morality and the likelyhood of success.

 

[cybrxkhan]

I also agree with this.

I think there's ways to make it where intrigue option will still be useful without feeling forced. For instance, maybe if you have the intrigue focus, you'll have access to better ways to free relatives and so on, but you're still able to free relatives if you don't have an intrigue focus, it just won't be as easy to do.

Perhaps it could be done thusly: when you open up the diplomacy menu there would be "Intrigue" button with the same sort of option menu like granting titles or declaring war but instead you could choose things like kidnap and rescue or spy on. And it would make the spymaster - if he/she agrees to do it - to perform those actions as usually. But limit it to one errand at the time. A councillor sidemission, if you will. Spymaster's agreement would depend on opionions of you and the chosen target, their own general morality and the likelyhood of success.

This is another decent possibility.

 

[Talq]

Don't like the restriction, especially as fairly often the people who are going to want to break a relative from jail are unlanded and so don't have access to any focus.

 

[NewbieOne]

Thanks, guys. Please keep'em coming.

Re: Spymaster, I think the Build Spy Network could simply include a chance of freeing up your relatives and people for whom you are the top liege. A low chance maybe, on account of how difficult it may be. There could perhaps be an event where you get to speed it up by sponsoring a bribe or otherwise committing some resources or taking a certain risk.

In any case, 'critical failure' could result in death, oubliette or (back to the) dungeon.

***

On a different note, I see a potential roleplaying problem here with feudals taken prisoner in battle: Some nobles (male only, I guess) could see themselves as honour-bound not to escape, for example because they actually made an explicit promise in return for having their lives spared. This could apply especially to house arrest/milder quarters.

A jailed plotter with some really high ideas of honour (which didn't prevent him from plotting), or some really dutiful courtier under arbitrary imprisonment, could see himself as honour-bound to sit in the cell his liege put him in.

***

In any case, I'd like to just be able to ransom them out anyway. Gold should work. It shouldn't matter where it comes from, unless the prison owner wants to spite you or distrusts you.

 

[Andrzej I]

I think there's ways to make it where intrigue option will still be useful without feeling forced. For instance, maybe if you have the intrigue focus, you'll have access to better ways to free relatives and so on, but you're still able to free relatives if you don't have an intrigue focus, it just won't be as easy to do.

I was about to propose the same thing. I think that, regardless of focus, one should be able to attempt to free one's close relative. A vassal or random courtier, however? I could understand keeping it locked behind the focus.

 

[Jorlem]

Can the game keep track of why characters were imprisoned, in the same way it tracks causes of death? If so, then maybe the focus limitation could be waived for freeing characters imprisoned by raiders, but not waived for most other reasons.

 

[Talq]

To be honest, prisoners captured by raiders (vikings) should be among the more difficult to free. Your rescue party is ostensibly hoofing it deep into different culture, different religion territory. The other issue is that if everybody can rescue concubines, then it has to be difficult or they wont be concubines for very long.

 

[Monphat]

Just make it a new plot option. Modders have already been successful in that regard.

 

[NewbieOne]

There should be a CB anyway. Let's take France. France perhaps wouldn't go to war for the daughter of a knight or a baron from somewhere along the coast, but for someone from the real family — most definitely. Or maybe even of the grand vassals.

 

[Arizal]

+1

 

[Cetan]

+1

 

[Azarias59]

I think the focuses should be less restrictive, but also less powerful.

 

[unmerged(30644)]

Rescue prisoner plot please.