Anyone Else Hate Assaulting Settlements?

[Quickening]

The problem is it's hard to take a city with 4 weak units?

A rebel city right at the start of the game yes.

Anyway I restarted my game and ignored those two rebel towns. Not that any of the other rebel places around Jerusalem are any easier!
My faction leader just died assaulting one of them. Tough game.

[Empirate]

It should actually be quite easily manageable to take the settlement with your units. Try advancing one unit of archers so they are just in range of the town center. About half a bowshot back, deploy your second unit of archers. Keep your general near to this second unit. When your first archer unit fires at the defenders in the square (keep them in loose formation if the defender has missile troops, too), some melee unit usually charges out to see them off. Run your first archers away once the enemy meleers get close, while the second archer unit shoots them up. The enemy won't usually run after your skirmishing archers for long, they daren't leave the settlement proper. Instead, they return to the town square... which means you can rinse and repeat until you feel ready to assault the town square. Your general might even find himself in position to charge at the enemy meleers once in a while. You'll probably lose most of one unit of archers if the enemy has missiles, but apart from that you should be able to severely cut your losses if the enemy doesn't have many more troops than you.

[Razor1952]

Certainly assaulting settlements can be hard, particularly if you do frontal assaults.

Strategically I think they are quite good as it forces you to not be lazy and blast the opposition. I always try a multiple sided attack and try and out flank the defenders.

Climbing ladders into a well defended city will almost always fail unless you have used seige equipment or flanking strategy.

Obviously attacking armies will suffer more than defenders so look on them as more challenging strategically.

[Furious Mental]

Well yeah if you try to take a settlement with a seriously inferior army you will probably get beaten. I would have thought it would go without saying.