Quote Originally Posted by Encaitar
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