I've sieged a city and the AI has a settler near it that gets involved in the battle if I attack.



So what happens each turn? The AI retreats, and I'm not allowed to attack the city, even though I have two armies near it.

Hi eobet,

Do you mean that there is an army containing one settler on the city you're besieging, and it prevents attacks against the city itself?

Well, if you attack the settler army, it will retreat after loosing 50% of its health. So, you just have to repeat this action twice and you'll get rid of it.

Except when you are dealing with the broken lords who retreat and fully heal every turn.

And when not dealing with Broken Lords, it takes 3 attacks to eliminate a retreating army, because they regenerate.



Regardless, it does seem like it ought to be possible to attack a city itself even if there happens to be a defending army standing on top of it. Otherwise, they can keep popping cheap units out of the garrison one at a time, and if each one delays you by three turns...

It happened to me when I attacked a city with only militia inside. In the battle prompt, I could see that the nearby Settler will reinforce the militia in battle.



So I entered the combat on "Manual". The Settlers retreated from battle and I could not capture the city... even though the Settler was NOT in the main army, and they are not supposed to be in the main army, so they should not have the option to retreat but only the option of not participating in the battle i.e not reinforcing



And based on previous comments, this looks like it can be exploited. The solution imo is that if a city is being attacked, the retreat option should be disabled on the defenders, without exceptions. Only the city attacker can retreat.



EDIT: Also it makes no sense that a reinforcing army gets to decide the retreat option even though it is a city battle lol