I lost a siege when i was winning it!!!!!

[Lichgod]

Taking Crete, losing control of the square back to the defender frustrated me last night. I would take the square, then a routing unit from battles with the reinforcing army elsewhere would show up and change the square back to defender control. Even blocking the roads did not work. One routing unit still had 2 guys survive passing through a phalanx to reset the square timer.

RTW has set the defender rally location to the town square. If the attacker controls the square, i.e. unrouted units there, the square should not switch back to the defender if a routed unit shows up (and dies). The defender should either move a formed unit to the square (still easy to do) or be forced to route all attacking units in the square to reclaim it.

I take heart enjoying the stupid AI sitting in the square and not responding to point blank missile fire. Balances out the timer and other factors.

I mentioned this before, I usually do not assault sieged towns that have half or more stack of units. I will wait them out and let them attack me (if the AI garrison sallies by itself, you do not get a deployment option). I have found the AI will bring up another stack and hit me with a relief force and garrison force. By maximizing casualties on the garrison force, the battle victory will also give me the city. You need to inflict 90-95% losses on the garrison and allow no unrouted unit to escape.

[RedKnight]

Magraev, to be a little more precise, I believe you have to control it for 3 minutes IF there are any non-routed enemies left. Which is to say that if one could quickly run and kill or route anyone left (there may only be tiny enemy scraps left, which will panic just seeing you coming), you will win as of that instant, even if 3 minutes are not up.

If you get all remaining enemies to route, it will give you the "do you want to Continue the battle to kill them off or not?" popup, as is usual for battles when they've all routed. You'll still win, even if you don't kill them all.

Of course, if you have killed everybody, it ends instantly already - no 3 minute wait needed.

IIRC I once had a situation where the only enemy left was one lone enemy cavalry (one man) on a side street perpendicular to the plaza, who ran back and forth, unable to pathfind his was to the plaza, I guess. (Or was he wavering between rushing the plaza or being scared of me? Who knows.) Meanwhile the 3 minute counter, and the overall battle counter, were counting down. So I sent my general after the loner. As soon as my general rounded the corner of the side street and the loner spotted him, he routed, and Bam, Victory.