I was under the impression that units may not leave a city if it is under siege. You can take out other cities, and world resources.

There appears to be something weird going on with the game mechanics as they apply to empire cities. They do not suffer any consequences with negative resource values. In my last game, i had surrounded and cut off Magnar's capitol city (the only city he had left) and taken over all his external resources. At the beginning of the siege, he was at -40 gilder and -3.8 food with 0 materials and 0 population. He had 17 guard units in the city including himself and had a power rating of 134. 100 turns later, with no increase in any of these values, he had 20 units in his city and a power rating of 143! My little sorceress had to nuke it from the air (Curgen's Inferno) - it was the only way. Has anyone else noticed this?

So...

They resources they produce are stockpiled in the city, not distributed to their empire as a whole? If they build anything they must have produced the materials for it locally?

OR

Is it a one way transaction only? They don't send their resources into their owners pool, but spend from the global pool if they produce a unit from there. I've never had the computer siege me so I can't experiment with its effect.

So it is a siege without war machines...  I like Gaston's soloution!  bonus points for style!

If you brought catapults, it would be great if the defense value of the city walls would slowly deteriorate as the siege progresses. At fortress levels, that's 30% increase to armor, a hefty amount that could well bring the units above the invincibility line (more armor than attack).

Same here. How do you do this?

Does this include resources from improvements that are in their area of influence but not part of the city? If so I wonder if it is possible to use this mechanism to make a local economy....

But... wouldn't you need an army strong enough to destroy the city in order to siege them? And then, why not just capture the city?

No. They have bonuses to there stats while in the city. If they sallyied forth from the city and attacked me I would decimate them. 20-30% bonus to HP's and defense is significant in mid/late game.

It's probably easier to notice the reverse being true. If an enemy attacks your city you totally crush the attacking force, if you went after them you get annihilated.

With frog's improvements to the AI I find myself facing armies equipped with lord hammers and medium armor. The battles are very close. My army might normally have a slight advantage in a fair fight. The garrison and terrain bonuses (IE Kingdom fighting on Empire desecrated lands) make it suicide. But I can seige them and they can't break the siege without coming out and loosing their bonuses.

I'm was mostly just wondering how bad the seige actually hurts them. IMO not enough. I think it should disable healing bonuses from being garrisoned. Then I could attack in waves and my damage would stick for a longer period of time.

Side note: That revive land spell is awesome but can only be cast in your zone of control. Its usful for taking out armys sitting on the border. cast it next to them in your ZOC and then attack they lose their +10% bonus turns into a -10% penalty to attack and defese, your inverts as well. Thats a huge swing.

There should be some indication that the siege is actually going on, some sort of animation or graphic on the map because it's not enough to just click the siege action.  When I tried it, nothing happened so I just assumed it was broken.  There was no message or anything so I just thought it hadn't been implemented yet or something.