Seiges? Does anything actually happen?

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.

I have no idea...and that angers me...I should know everything about this game!  I have never messed with the siege mechanics.

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?

Sieges cut a city off from the global resource system.  

Effectively, sieges make cities behave like they do in GalCiv/Civ.

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.

correct. They lose access to global resources, they can only use what they make locally and what they produce is cut off from the rest of the kingdom/empire.

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

Suggstions:

You should be able to make a city surrender without fighting via sieging, eventually.

Turns should be based on food surplus/deficit, CHA of champion in city, and level of city, and enemy's siege rating (based on tech, power level of non-heroes in army+ siege engines) 

If a city surrenders, the defenders have to fight the attackers without city bonuses and starting at low morale, or retreat.  Sieging should also hurt the troops some inside the town at random.

Razing and Sieging need to not require techs, though Sieging should be vastly improvable with techs.

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).

You can siege?  How does that work?  I've never seen it happen, nor done it myself.

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....

If you have siege tech you just have to be adjacent to a city. Then its in the list of actions. You'll have to hit that little triple arrow button probably to see it. Its right next to guard, skip turn, and whatever.

[BUG] Ok so I was playing last night and and told my sovereign to attack the city. She ran up to it but was out of movement points so she stopped right next to it. So since she was standing there anyway I sieged it. I hit next turn and she attacked while it was still sieged and I won the battle. But my city was still under siege! I couldn't move my sovereign because it said she was siegeing but I couldn't click the end siege button.

The good thing about this bug was that I could see what happens to the city under seige. If you have a sieged city selected it puts the local resources up at the top instead of your global resource pool. My city was like -5 food and the other resources were red.

The only way to fix it was to reload and then it let me click unsiege. I havn't tried to reproduce again, but it seems like if your soveign was about to attack a town the next turn and you turn on the seige, her qued orders still take affect and ignore the no moving while seiging mechanism. You can then see for yourself what the effects are. You'll have to reload to fix the seige bug.

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?

If you're not attacking the city you can avoid the city defenses (which can be substantial). You might be able to defeat them in open combat, but not while they're in the city.

Also, you probably want to win with the least possible casualties.

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.

I sieged once in a 1.09 game and I remember it reducing the stats and all that, plus it nuked their ZOC. Thus, the resources they had access to around their capital swung my way. Their ZOC was literally their city alone. I also did run across that weird bug where I couldn't get a stack to unseige. But again, that was back in 1.09 - I haven't tried it yet in 1.1.

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.

If you are in cloth map, there is a guanlet fist graphic over the city. I usually play cloth map so I don't know what it looks like zoomed in.

Its like the fish bones over a city when it doesn't have enough food.