So I'm experiencing my first siege. There's no enemy unit out there that I can see. And wherever it is, it must be pretty small because it is reducing the defenses by only -9 per turn. I have an army with a Hero that arrived, but it's not being allowed in, nor is there anything to attack to rout the besiegers.



From what I can see, the siege mechanic is kind of silly. A teenie, tiny force can start the siege but no amount of force can drive off the besiegers? That just doesn't seem right.

Never mind. The enemy army was lost in the suburbs graphics. Close up, there wasn't anything to show they were there. I had to zoom out to the Strategic view for the unit's banner to appear.



I don't understand how an army with 3 respectable units (100+ hit points, 50-100 damage, etc.) would only be reducing the defenses by 9 points per turn. Especially since it was a new city with a defense of only 100 hit points and the Militia unit hadn't appeared yet.

seems like the design choices the developers make in their games usually revolve around slowing down rapid extermination. they seem to be trying to make it harder to just raze your way through an opponent to win. you can't just take a bunch of cities without having it damage your economy through the happiness hit your empire will take. you can't just quickly besiege a city, especially a newly laid one, just to prevent your opponents expansion. otherwise you could always have an army standing ready to take and raze a new city and prevent your opponent from ever expanding with minimal effort. that's my guess. it also explains why there is the ownership concept so you have to wait several turns to get ownership of a city before you can raze it. this is something i used to do a lot in civ games. just take opponent cities and raze them so my army could move on and repeat.

If I'm not mistaken, I belive the siege reduction is equal to the combined level of the units...thus it sounds like you were being seiged with 3 units, each of which was level 3.



3 x 3 = 9



As for why they didn't attack your city and take it if it was empty of even malitia units...hard to say. Could be poor AI programing.

Maybe they couldn't see that the "guards" on the parapets were actually just dressed up scarecrows.



Historical trivia: Harlech Castle in Wales -- from where we get the famous "Men of Harlech" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jXFebAjVco -- lasted off and on for seven years and at the end there were only 17 men defending the walls.