Does anyone have any tips or crafty ways of making walls (I am speaking more of wooden walls here) an actual advantage for the besieged rather that just a death trap?

I've added a siegestarter trait to all characters which gives them a +10 command bonus when defending walls (and a concomitant reduction in siegeattack to the assailant) but of course this is limited or negated when no character is involved, and in battle mode the player is going to beat the ai most times anyway - and besides all that it actually makes little difference anyway :(

I've also remove the flanking walls from the gates and replaced them with walls with towers (so 2 extra towers per gate). This has improved things a bit although there is still a huge blindspot for them once troops get near the gate.

I've also changed the towers arrows to more of a machine gun effect. Oh, and I have reduced the ram attack to make taking down the door take longer.

Despite all these things the settlements are still too easy to take, both in autoresolve and on the battlemap.

Does anyone have any other tips? And does anyone know how to increase the range of the arrows from the towers? Increasing velocity did not work.

Thx.