Options when defending a settlement

[Dark_Magician]

Just thinking back to MTW, I'd like to see the defender given the following options when a settlement is first attacked (i.e. on the campaign map, an enemy stack moves up and tries to initiate a seige/assault).

1. Give battle.
Your forces within the castle march out to meet the enemy in a regular, open field battle (as opposed to having to sally forth later, which can be quite awkward). If you are defeated, the survivors retreat to the settlement and it becomes beseiged.

2. Prepare for seige.
Your forces remain within the settlement, and it becomes beseiged (as currently happens all the time in RTW).

3. Abandon the settlement.
Your forces flee, and the settlement is surrendered to the enemy.

Surrender is fine idea. In addition I'd say that a big city should have by default one unit of city militia defending it because it is not normal when one can "fish" for cities accidently left unguarded and take them with minimal effort. In reality medieval cities normally enjoyed autonomy and employed own militias as they frequently do up to today

[Peasant Phill]

there will be (a) free unit(s) of militia for every settlement/city/castle. So they won't be unguarded unless the A.I. is unable to handle it, which I doubt.

[Hobot]

Well this is great news that they actually already have these features! Once again I'm more psyched than ever

[spong]

I think there should be the options to negotiate as someone mentioned earlier. I understand it might overcomplicate things though but it would be nice to negotiate terms rather than just fight or flee. Having said that it sounds as though the options they have implemented are very nice - I hated having to manually sally out of a settlement.