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.

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)

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)

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.

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.

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.