I am a little more than midway in a long campaign and refuse to start over but have a question with no the no walls.

Will the AI sally forth if no walls are there?

I ask this because while the AI expands slow with walls I am witnessing expansion, but for me it is alot easier when a city has small walls as opposed to large ones, as my 3 onagers will have them scurrying all over. When there are walls in place, the onagers are used for the doors and towers, but the walls prevent any mass gatherings.

Granted I didnt start on hard mode at first so not sure if that would help but often having the enemy just standing there getting massacred by my flaming pitch wasnt as fun as storming the walls and trying to control the towers. Altho I did notice that with fast cavalry and a good path you can almost run to the town center while most of the troops are still on the walls and hope you can defend the center for 3 minutes.