Quote Originally Posted by Caravel
Can anyone say if this has improved in M2TW?? I'm not saying that MTW sieges were anything special because they definitely weren't, but are M2TW sieges noticeably better, and does the scenario above still occur?
M2TW sieges are noticeably better. I've often been wrongfooted by the AI and had to defend a settlement with a miserable garrison (this wrongfooting almost never happened to me in RTW and is evidence of the improved strategic AI & challenge of M2TW). Typically, I lose the siege defence. When the AI has artillery it tends to stay out of range of the towers and make multiple breaches in the walls, destroying towers with any left over ammo. Only when the artillery has expended its ammo does it storm the settlement. Quite frankly, I've learnt from the AI in terms of a methodical approach to storming a settlement.

I can't say whether the scenario you mentioned happens in M2TW or not, as my experience of siege defences is not extensive. But in the couple of dozen or so I've played, I've never experienced it. The AI does concentrate on one side of the settlement though - at least while it has only modest sized armies (I recall from BI that sieges by multiple stacks could sometimes lead to multiple sides of the settlement being attacked).

The big problem I noticed with the BI siege AI was that it always seemed to buy a small amount of siege equipment - a ram, two ladders and a tower. That is just not enough to take down a settlement guarded by anything but a token Roman force. The virtual inability of the AI to take stonewalled settlements is a big flaw in BI. In M2TW, it does not seem to be so constrained.