siege is confusing but there are ways around it.
first. the troop number calculation gives defenders 100% advantage. meaning they'll have twice as many troops in combat as they would in a field battle based on the relative troop count of each army. example. if you have 1000 troops attacking and they have 1000 defending . and the battle size is 1000. in a field battle 500 would spawn for each side. but in a siege. only 333 would spawn for the attackers and 667 would spawn for the defender. meaning it's necessary to bring twice as many men as you think you need. usually i bring 4-5 times enemy troops at least so we outnumber them at least 2 to 1 in the siege.
then you need to worry about the siege method. do you wanna just send men into the meat grinder, or do you wanna bombard them for months and starve them to death first. or maybe something in between, you wanna be quick but don't wanna lose that many men.
personally i like the third method. which means i need lots of archers. i like using mercenaries that have lots of ranged like the brotherhood of the woods, or the company of the boar, or the karakhuzaits... this way i don't have to use my own troops lol. before you go in, make sure the enemy has no defensive siege units on their walls. bomb them all down with yours.
then, there's the siege itself. you have to get around the dumb ass ai. which automatically goes to suicide. it's a speed test for your fingers. there's a way but you have to reorganize your groups. and send all your melee as far away from the wall as possible. while having your archers shoot at theirs. you personally need to do a lot of shooting here also. if you did everything right. you should have a few catapults working as well as more than double the archers of the enemies. with good marksmanship and deep quivers you could personally take out 30-50 enemies from range. and once you've taken down almost all the enemy archers, you commence the push.
have your infantry now march under the ladders, no need for siege tower. and the enemy infantry would now come up to the wall and match yours. keep shooting them with your archers, they'll have shields up but will still die to attacks. once your army is out of ammo. attack from all sides.
