Here's the problem. After going through an epic gauntlet of multiple battles, units and armies clashing over and over, eventually leading me to an epic 3 turn siege, I conquered the capital of a neighbouring civ...Then I had to wait 15 more turns for the war to be over before I got anything out of it.

When I win a siege, I want to be able to do something with that city the moment I win. It's not fun to have to wait an arbitrary amount of time before you can do ANYTHING with it. Especially since the rest of the war was just waiting there was barely any excitement in it at that point. Like, just a pop-up even of what you want the fate of the city to be, could be great. Loot it for money causing it damage, keeping it intact in case you are looking to conquer it or maybe taking away pops from it to your other cities. Some options could even be related to what civics you have unlocked, say if you have slavery enabled you could unlock the option to take away people and distribute them throughout your empire.

This is in sharp contrast with Civ or Total War games where cities taken, are immediately available to you. Even in Stellaris you gain the resources from systems, even though the planets don't necessarily belong to you yet. Even in Imperator Rome you still gain a buttload of gold when occupying places and if you put your King or Tribal chief at the head of your army you get sacking events when you occupy a city, where you can choose how heavily you want to loot the place.

Warfare overall hampers your economy quite a bit in this game, so it's not encouraged enough, but even when you do go through it, it feels like it favors the defender in a lot of ways.

The new change to ransacking for example - ransacks previously were 1 turn which yes, it was too fast. The defender should have an opportunity to block you, BUT now it takes WAY too long and you gain basically nothing. 44 gold from a deposit is barely worth the time investment. Ransacking isn't very profitable and is extremely slow.

Oh and here's a problem with sieges. Because cavalry can't attack into siege battles it can render emblematic units of your civ completely worthless. Which isn't fine, I understand horses not scaling walls, but in other games there's ways around that - In Total War titles you can use ladders to scale walls with your infantry and then open the gate for your cavalry to come in. Or in some of them you can dismount the cavalry. But there is no open gate option at least I didn't see any, even when I had units inside the walls, my cavalry couldn't really do anything other than provide a +1 bonus or try to soak some damage by deliberately putting them to a low ground position to bait the AI into attacking into them. That's very counter-intuitive stuff, ideally there should be ways for them to go through captured gates or dismount or something. Maybe attack at a penalty, they lose their charge bonuses and a lot of combat strength but still.

You do get the resources and money of the city immediately.

I think it makes lots of sense that the people of the city won't follow you right away without a proper resolution.
It's also to the advantage of the players, if the enemy takes your city. Since you get time to take it back.

I also believe "humankind" is not just a typo, the game stands for a more humane conduct, even in war.

If you want to siege a city with any infantry, you should at least bring siege weapons, this will allow you to break the walls. (artillery works too later on)
Mounted units are considerably stronger than infantry, there has to be balance somewhere.

AkashaX1885 wrote:

You do get the resources and money of the city immediately.

I think it makes lots of sense that the people of the city won't follow you right away without a proper resolution.
It's also to the advantage of the players, if the enemy takes your city. Since you get time to take it back.

I also believe "humankind" is not just a typo, the game stands for a more humane conduct, even in war.

If you want to siege a city with any infantry, you should at least bring siege weapons, this will allow you to break the walls. (artillery works too later on)
Mounted units are considerably stronger than infantry, there has to be balance somewhere.

Well okay couple notes there.

1 - You only get the gold production which doesn't make sense with your second point. If the people don't join you, why are their traders making you money? I'd much rather not get any of the gold per turn from the city and instead just ransack it for a lump sum of money instead with events that happen. Also it's a bit weird that you can't build in those territories, like, okay the people don't join, but you should be able to fortify the place or build strategically useful buildings. Harbors, barracks, etc..that's how things went in real warfare. And no, if your capital falls the opponent shouldn't get a chance to take it back. Capital falls = You're done. Get out. Try again next war. I don't like how much the defender is favored and given 2nd chances. If you let your capital be captured, you made a mistake and have to live with the consequences.

2 - Humane conduct in the medieval era? Just no.

3 - Yeah you could bring siege weapons, if you can produce them, but honestly what's the point? Crossbowmen are just better siege weapons. Like, seriously siege weapons in this game suck. The benefit of opening up a single tile for cavalry is NOT worth the hassle. Even if you open up that tile, it doesn't let you attack other tiles, just that single one. And if there were any units on it, the artillery would probably kill it before the wall breaks which means your cavalry don't get any benefit at all from the siege weapons. The AI won't just come out of the walls unless you bait it with low hp targets or favorable battles like letting them attack from uphill. At which point you murder them because they came out.

4 - Mounted units shouldn't be considerably stronger than infantry. They should have unique benefits, but they shouldn't just be flat out better. Pikemen/Spearmen should annihilate cavalry, but they don't really do that. Especially with the heavy charge bonuses you can one-shot pretty much any infantry. That's just not good balance.

On the flip side... Siege weapons are free units and you are slowly killing the enemies free units while you keep a siege going. If we were fighting a very big siege battle I'd say this is worth it. In a small siege I'd say rush in there asap though sure. Even if citizens can't wail on you they can still be meat shields that guard flanks and your ranged therefore can be pretty dangerous when outnumbered still. Using ranged units on the outside of walls isn't very great due to the defenders city defense bonuses too. If you plowed a hole and then had ranged shooting from within the city, well there you go then breeze them down and just defend them. Still need that hole though and then to defend the ranged with melee. And then there is LOS rules potentially.

I don't think sieges are 100% getting a fair shake here is all I'm saying ultimately vs what we saw they could be previously in targeted opendevs. Also imagine them vs players if you play with friends.