Too many siege battles?

[dismal]

I also fight almost entirely siege battles, it seems.

There isn't typically much point in fighting other than in cities. AI field armies can often just be ignored with minimal consequences. On offense, I'll sometimes march right past a full stack army to take a city with 4 or 5 units in it. Sometimes I find myself 3-4 cities deep into the AI's empire while it figures out what to do with its stack it had milling around the border.

I think this is a problem only in that the AI is not really very good at sieges, and not very good at concentrating its force where it needs to.

Overall, though, I think the AI has improved on both offensive and defensive sieges from RTW.

[katank]

It's the equivalent of island hopping for the US force during latter stages of WW2. Just smash their settlements and then their field armies turn rebel. On a speedy blitz with spies and all cav armies, you can often wipe out a faction in a few turns. If you don't mind the trade impact, you can just let the rebels sit for a while before taking em out.

[dismal]

Yep, ignore those field stacks long enough and you can turn them rebel before ever figthing them.

If you have really moved the border back quickly, they seem to go into a form of cognitive dissonance. They're like "What are we doing three provinces behind enemy lines when our script tells us not to go past the border". They just seem to glumly walk about for a while before deciding to head back homeward.

My last campaign I caught the French AI's last family members in Paris and his whole empire went rebel -- though I suspect he outnumbered me in the area by 4 or 5 stacks to one. Not the AI's proudest moment. Though, to be fair, he seemed to have 6 or 7 inquisitors working him over

[RussianWinter]

Yes, far FAR too many siege battles. This is an aspect of the game where it isn't "broken" in a non-functioning sense but broken in a very poor gameplay decision sense.

I hate how an army can just waltz up, lay siege to a castle, and suddenly imprison the troops inside forcing a sally or trade cut. An army should at least catch word of the approaching forces and have the option for a field battle.

[dismal]

Yes, far FAR too many siege battles. This is an aspect of the game where it isn't "broken" in a non-functioning sense but broken in a very poor gameplay decision sense.

I hate how an army can just waltz up, lay siege to a castle, and suddenly imprison the troops inside forcing a sally or trade cut. An army should at least catch word of the approaching forces and have the option for a field battle.

A defender should want to fight from behind the walls.

I certainly do when on defense.

The problem, I think, is that the game does not give me any incentive to try and catch the defenders in the open, which I should strongly prefer to fighting them while they're behind their walls -- but don't. Because the AI is not particularly good behind walls, and/or tends to underman its garrisons.

I think if it were two halfway decent human players playing each other, outright siege assaults would be costly and significantly more rare. The human would ensure a challenging garrison (which the AI can fail to do even when it has troops in the area) and take full advantage of the many bonuses the siege defender has available.

[Ars Moriendi]

AI field armies can often just be ignored with minimal consequences. On offense, I'll sometimes march right past a full stack army to take a city with 4 or 5 units in it. Sometimes I find myself 3-4 cities deep into the AI's empire while it figures out what to do with its stack it had milling around the border.

Armies area of control (the red zone you can't cross) should be increased. This way they will be really guarding the borders and controlling teritory, as you'll have a harder time bypassing them to hit the cities. Right now they can only halt your advance when placed at chokepoints, and are only able to do that because of the map being made of unrealistically many impassable areas.
If this can be done it will decrease the number of sieges in favour of field battles, and if well-balanced we'll have enough of both to please everyone.

Additional ideas :
- area of control should be proportional to unused movement points (eg. if a stack moves 50% of its max distance, then its aoc drops by half)
- no rebel spawn in area of control
- automatic capture after defeat if movement points not enough to get out of winner's aoc

Anyone knows if this can be modded in ?

[Aaron A Aardvark]

At the moment you only loose cash when you're besieged but if your population started starving to death and your cavalry were eating their horses there'd be an incentive to come out and fight, or send an army to lift the siege. This wouldn't be too unrealistic and would rsult in more field battles.

I just think sieges are boring - last night I captured seven cities in one turn - all virtual walk overs as my spies had opened the gates.

[dopp]

You should also check and see if you are using mods like Ultimate AI where all land movement is doubled. Invading stacks on double movement can hop from one city to the next without ever being caught in the field.