At what difficulty will rebel armies besiege cities?

[Aymer de Valence]

I know for sure they don't do it on medium or below, and they haven't tried it yet on any of my hard campaigns. Do rebel armies only attempt to capture a city on very hard difficulty? Or don't they bother at all?

Thanks

[Primo]

I know for sure they don't do it on medium or below, and they haven't tried it yet on any of my hard campaigns. Do rebel armies only attempt to capture a city on very hard difficulty? Or don't they bother at all?

Thanks

It has nothing to do with the difficulty. Rebel Armies will besiege you if their army is strong enough, and your garrison is weak enough. Since the AI doesn´t recruit in Vanilla, it is unlikely it will ever get a strong enough army, but if you garrison a city with only a peasant unit, you may be up for a surprise ...

[Aymer de Valence]

Ahhh this is interesting, i do tend to keep a medium sized garrison in most of my cities, this would explain why they don't try to capture any. I might just leave 1 unit in a city as an experiment Cheers!

[Feather]

I don't think the size of your garrison has any effect on the AI's decision to besiege a town.

During a recent campaign I was moving one of my armies back north through Italy after having eliminated a small rebel force at the south.
They had taken some very minor casualties (8-12 men on each hastati stack) and since I wasn't in a hurry to get them anywhere I stopped them at one of my cities to retrain them into full strength.

The city now had a garrison of two generals, two peasant units, 2 equites and 6 hastati.

I set my units to be retrained and then finished my turn, and then out of nowhere appeared a rebel stack of 2 town watch, 1 hastati, a peltast unit, a unit of javelin cavalry and a rebel general (Or something like that).
This ridiculously small force somehow decided it was a good idea to lay siege to the city where I currently had my forces.

So I don't think garrison size is gonna do much to dissuade a rebel army. Although this was a VH/VH campaign and the AI tends to get really aggressive in very hard mode.

[Primo]

I don't think the size of your garrison has any effect on the AI's decision to besiege a town.

During a recent campaign I was moving one of my armies back north through Italy after having eliminated a small rebel force at the south.
They had taken some very minor casualties (8-12 men on each hastati stack) and since I wasn't in a hurry to get them anywhere I stopped them at one of my cities to retrain them into full strength.

The city now had a garrison of two generals, two peasant units, 2 equites and 6 hastati.

I set my units to be retrained and then finished my turn, and then out of nowhere appeared a rebel stack of 2 town watch, 1 hastati, a peltast unit, a unit of javelin cavalry and a rebel general (Or something like that).
This ridiculously small force somehow decided it was a good idea to lay siege to the city where I currently had my forces.

So I don't think garrison size is gonna do much to dissuade a rebel army. Although this was a VH/VH campaign and the AI tends to get really aggressive in very hard mode.

This does happen, yes. This is because the Slave AI is as bad as the AI of the other factions.
VH Battle difficulty may indeed be a factor here, because it tricks the AI into thinking it can win a battle - But that is a guess, we don´t know how the AI works.

You can still see, even on VH/VH, how a large Garrison decreases the likehood of a rebel siege, and you will have only very few exceptions.

[Alexanderos]

I don't even bother with any very hard campaign , it's just idiotic. I mean , scythia , the poorest faction in rtw , gets to a treasury of 30000 from turn 2 ?