Help with sieges

When I began M2TW, I tried to command siege assaults personally. However, after I witnessed the utter destruction of my soldiers who attempted to scale the walls and enter through the broken gates, I then on decided to auto-resolve, which gives me decent victories in sieges. However, I was wondering if there is some better way to command sieges personally, instead of just skipping it entirely and not enjoying the experience myself. I was thinking I could possibly use artillery, but I can never seem to get it to work right. (Whenver I use the monster ribault in a field battle, their crews never seem to actually get it to start shooting.) Are there any suggestions on how to fight siege assaults?

First off, I have to say I do not know about the cannons in MTW2 yet, so I will not touch that subject.

I have found that to win sieges against cities with reasonable casualty rates I need about 2 trebuchets or maybe 3-4 catapults (I prefer trebuchets).

A good trick is to breach a wall in a few places near the street entrance to the plaza in the city. The idea is to make a blitz to the city square and keep it.

First I deploy quite far from the walls to avoid missile fire and make one breach (just to make sure that I gain entry). After this, I take out 2-3 towers surrounding the breached wall. Then I make one more breach and save rest of the ammo for the assault.

After I have the two holes in the wall, I have a few options. The enemies will come to the breach to defend the wall but will not come out. So if you have missile superiority you can shoot at the enemies. After this I send in heavy infantry. This is a must for me to have in sieges. You simply need more heavies than the enemy. Spears are almost worthless when assaulting a narrow breach against heavy infantry, as is cavalry.

The heavies will make way for lighter troops to get in. Once you clear out some way for other troops send them in. Spears in shiltrom are better than nothing inside, if you are fighting light infantry/spears.

My preferred army for assaulting castles is about:

4 heavy infantry (for assaulting the breaches)
2-3 trebuchets
4-6 pavise crossbows
5-6 spears/pikes
Rest of cavalry

This is just a general army composition I use when I have assaults in mind, though the cav and other stuff is to survive a big battle prior to getting to the city for the assault. I do not use siege equipment other than the trebuchets/catapults.

The reason for saving ammo on the siege engines is to wait for enemy archers to deploy on walls next to the breaches you made. Once they are climbing to position, shoot the walls under them. A few trebuchet shots will crumble the top of the wall and the archers will fall to their death :laugh4:
I have killed 200 archers in one battle simply by waiting for them to get up there and then shooting them down with trebuchets... But remember to target the walls, not the units.