Desert combat penalty?

[Decker]

I fought a siege battle in which the Scots where attacking me at Iverness(they never took it at that point) with just about a full stack army. I had my only unit of peasent archers and peasant spear militia up on the wall. They were assaulted by 2 top quality Scottish units(one had a big axe and the other regular spearmen or at least a unit armed with spears and sizeable shields) using ladders. They were both handely defeated with very heavy causalties on both of their units, while my archers bore the brunt of their attack and were practically whipped out. I did end up losing the battle due to sheer wheight of numbers tho....
In another castle siege at Bordeaux, I assialed a wall defended by 2 archer units with 2 towers on each side with 2 militia spearmen and and some other units(forgot who) in quick succession using ladders after my ram was set ablaze. Each unit was defeated with ease, while engaging about 5-8 of the archers at a time while the rest kept shooting at my other units heading to the ladders. I did notice tho that at times I had numerical superiority over the engaged archers,but my guys never seemed to press but only watched until it was their turn to die. I do think the towers(including one located to the rear) were firing into the attacking troops as some died without being stabed or they could've triped on a dead body and fell on a sword I dunno?

I will agree with the fact that the weak units on the walls do get some kind of bonus but it can't be much since I have also taken walls with much stronger infantry defending them so it could also depend on what is happening at the gate or on another wall. It's all speculation for me at the moment.

[Ulstan]

The 'desert penalty' should be that heavily armored troops get fatigued quicker than do non armored troops. That's it. Anything else is ahistorical and will probably be bad for gameplay.

But this sounds more like a siege issue than a desert issue, TBH.