AI sovereigns illiterate ??

I notice this too.  Be cool if they dropped them if you kill them, if they aren't going to read them, I would like to.

Drop them, or be able to trade them.  If the game had more special items (since there is nothing really worth trading for now), it would be awesome if you could trade those too.

V1.1 is where they will add more content (I think).  If they do end up with more "goodies" please add a feature to trade them/drop them if possible.  Maybe when you kill an enemy soverign a "treasure chest" appears on the map at the location.

Saving these books isn't entirely senseless.  I often dump all combat-related stats on my sovereign to focus on spellcasting and economy-boosting perks, then pass on any combat-related books I find to my kids or maybe a nice champion.

I don't know why people think it is reasonable to take items off people you kill in the game? You think if you kill someone carrying a chest of gold in real life, the gold does not vanish too, ridiculous! otherwise how could famous characters like Robin hood have ever managed to steel from the rich and give to the poor if the gold actually remained for them to steal,,,, eerrr um, something not quite make sense here?? (extreme sarcasm alert)

+1 to being able to get things off champions corpses (books ... and weapons and armor! although obviously some chance for not getting worn weapon/armor as it might have been destroyed while you were killing them)
+1 to being able to trade these items (Hey there Resoyln, I'll agree to your peace treaty if you throw in your sovereign sword or that book of +8 atk)

I agree wit all this.  Also, especially in early and middle game, when decent equipment, weapons, armor are still so scarce, why, when you win a battle, don't get at least "some" of the defeated soldiers / individuals equipment.  Sure, some gets "lost" in the sand, some gets destroyed by the combat.  But all of it, always?

Ever face a SOV sporting some awesomely high armor factor/rating?  Kill him/her.  Wheres that powerful armor?  Somehow it grows legs and crawls into the sand, and hides forever.  Armor with a mobility factor built in!  (smile)

While I too would like to loot gear, one thing people tend to forget/ignore:

You know how people tend to hurt their hands and completely maul the plastic boxes around things like game controllers and electronics? Same thing with armor. Believe it or not, smacking someone with a giant hammer tends to dent the Plate Armor of +5 Studliness

Yeah, but armor consists of several independent pieces. Sure you should not hope to recover that masterpiece helm you just smashed with lord hammer (after all, its all bloody and gory inside, eww), but leggings and other non-head items should be fine. And IRL they WOULD strip helm in this scenario too, just bring it to blacksmith to repair first, read any historically accurate book on medieval.

So it should not be 100% drop for armor/weapon, but "high enough". And I believe they do not carry books with themself into fights, so these should be more recoverable.

Maybe items could be given a survival chance. Things like padded armor and clubs would virtually never survive, but uniques (particularly the items for the Master Quest) would always survive. Also, you should get the stuff from your own dead.

Just saw another case of a sovie carrying a book she should have read.  This time there was nobody for her to hand it too.  Just her and her stack after I took her last city.  She spent several turns sitting outside my territory, then moved in so I killed them.

I also would like to be able to pick up items off the battlefield (at least some good items -- I don't need a big collection of padded armor) but my main point was that it is silly for the AI not to use its books before it goes into a last-ditch battle.

Lord Cobol>  You are absolutely right.  A SOV (or anyone for that matter) in a battle for his/her/its life, would use everything they have to survive.  Any book giving a stat boost -yes, of course.  Hopefully v1.1x will address this.

While this isn't a big 'fix now' priority for me, I agree that enemy heroes and Sovereigns should be reading more...

Also, if they are packing midnight shards, cool weapons, or what have you, it'd be nice to get some of that booty after the battle.

And if we don't like the idea of easily picking up the loot on the battlefield, how about .... if something really good is lost, spawn a goodie-hut and let us battle the ghosts of the dead to recover it.