i left for a while, so i don't know when they put sieges in, but i feel that sieges a bit of a waste in m&b. don't get me wrong i like the fact that you can take castles and such, and once you mount the walls its okay, but i would rather have had them put their time in making a light cavalry AI, and maybe a skirmisher AI. in history these had distinct roles, different than an archer that gets pressed into melee, and the lack of which shows in the field battles. you still have lightly armored cavalry charging into (much smarter) infantry from the front, and infantry equipped as skirmishers (throwing weapons) not acting independently of the archers (they should be a separate group and should run much earlier than archers, at least have a skirmish order that makes them run much earlier than normal).
personally for my mod i wasn't going to have castle type battles, instead i was going to have the player setup a siege camp, then based on the ratio of defenders to siegers as well as supplies have the enemy sally forth and try to break the siege either outright or just get someone out to bring help, which would in turn cause a special "messenger party" to go to the nearest town and either bring and army or an armed supply "party" to punch a hole for supplies to get through. now with cattle quests if i do resume work on my mod, i'll have periodic cattle quests for the siege, with the option of sending someone off in your stead, basically a trade off between ensuring the arrival of the food or holding against a possible sally.
they put a lot of work into making sure the infantry don't run blindly into walls like the old .751 hacks at sieges, but for the most part you are still running up a ladder amid hefty missile fire so that you can take on three to five men against one. while that seems hard, if you instead shoot some of the archers before you run up (as your archers seem unable), then instead of fighting you jump over the men and extract yourself from the melee and then shoot or stab them in the back while they deal with your men, you can get your men on the walls, and then unless there is some quirk (such as in the khergits "urban fighting" approach) you've won.
why do you think that this mod is so good? it overcomes many of the shortfalls of native m&b, and thus transcends the native, thus it feels more complete than native, that is why it is good. thus the good old days was when there was hope that in the end it would feel complete. of course in native's defense it still is much better than most games out there, in fact i'd put up with some the old games that had small but dedicated teams working on them, its unfortunatly the only game in quite some time that is as good as some of the oldies.
[edit] oh yeah, and your signature is definately badass, and disturbing. not sure if it is more disturbing than badass or vice versa though.[/edit]
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