Besieged in Citadel and don't want to be starved out

[Heksenketel]

I am playing MTW2 for first time and am playing Venice around 1300. HRE is besieging me at Innsbruck (I have cannon towers). They have a mediocre stack with a captain and I think its going to wait the 8 turns to take the place over. I have a 4-star general with 4 pavise x-bow (wanted to also have 4 venetian archers but I had them down south in Venice getting armoured up when the HRE decided to lay seige) and 6 units of Venetian heavy infantry.

I want to have a defensive battle and can probably kill their army if I sally out but would like to know how things work so when I have 8 missile units in a future defensive battle I can use the missile units on the walls as my armies in field battles don't use missile units as I don't enjoy managing them.

I could easily bring up an army to relieve the settlement but I would like to have them be self-sufficient.

I'll just leave it at that for now, if more detail would be useful I'll be glad to provide it.

[Heksenketel]

I brought another army a few squares away from the citadel and the HRE booked. I guess they will assault only if they like their chances.

[Myth]

Crossbowmen perform very poorly when mounted on walls and shooting outside trough the crenelations. They arch their bolts and their accuracy suffers tremendously as a result. They are really good when shooting off the walls but INSIDE the city (for one reason or another).

Venetian Heavy Infantry will be good for autoresolve but in unmodded M2TW they suffer from the bugged 2-handed weapon attack and will probably be mauled by the enemy spear&shield or sword&shield infantry.

[Lord Godfrey]

When you are besieged there are four different options:

(1) Sally out and attack the besieging army – it takes some time to get your forces out thru the gate but the AI generally lets you accomplish that
(2) March another army to relieve the city – when you attack the city garrison acts as reinforcements
(3) Wait until the besieging army builds the capability to assault the walls and then hope that they do – I don’t think I have ever lost one of these battles unless I was severely outnumbered…of course I generally play as the English and longbowman stakes deployed all the right locations help
(4) Wait until you can no longer hold out and you are given the option sallying out or surrendering (I think)

Good luck