Eleutheroi hiring under siege? What's the mechanic/justification?

[Neyak]

I'm confused about the fact that occasionally, but not always, the eleutheroi seem to be able to recruit while under siege -- and not just recruit via what would be a normal turn's recruitment from a normal recruitment pool but something like six high-end units in one go.

What are the conditions under which this occurs? I simply haven't got enough data to answer that, though I've seen it happen a couple of times. An online search revealed that that also happens under MTW2 vanilla, though I haven't played that and so cannot confirm that. Is this something EB2 chose to keep? If so, what's the justification (as opposed to say, an army spawning outside the town of country folk being called to arms or something like that)?

[Baharr]

It looks like you've run into the garrison script. AFAIK some cities, like Athens, will spawn a garrison (if besieged with only a handful of soldiers inside the settlement) to simulate the citizenry rising up in arms to defend the polis. For non-Hellenistic factions it may simply simulate the fact that although the AI will occasionally leave crucial cities undefended, these places would realistically have a fairly sizeable contingent of defensive troops at all times.

Plenty of mods do the same - Medieval 2's CAI can only be improved up to a point. It still makes terrible defensive decisions sometimes.

[QuintusSertorius]

It's the Selective Garrison Script, which only applies to a handful of Rebel settlements, alongside all the starting faction capitals. It spawns up to 10 mostly levy-grade units if the settlement hasn't been besieged in the last 10 turns.

Our script has nothing to do with the vanilla one, it's something I wrote myself, and the justification is to cover the CAI's inability to maintain proper garrisons and protect some of the more important settlements on the map. It represents marshalling of all the citizens within the settlement, including freeing slaves and arming them.

[Neyak]

I see. Thanks.

That answers that. I had noticed it before in previous games but hadn't thought about it too much, but now I was finally trying to understand the mechanic.

[Geffalrus]

When does the script kick in? Is it something where if you bring siege weapons you could theoretically storm the city before the defense script summons extra defenders?

[Lusitanio]

Yes, that's right Geffalrus. It only happens after you siege the city and press end turn. So if you immediately assault the city with siege weapons before pressing end turn, the defense script won't summon extra defenders.

[QuintusSertorius]

It kicks in on the Rebel faction's turn, so if you have siege weapons or a spy in place, it won't trigger.

[BoleslavLev]

I know it has been 5 years, but I wonder: can this script be turned off?

It throws me off greatly that a tiny town which happens to be the last town of a faction suddenly has army in the thousands. It is also silly that the AI always uses this army aggressively against me. It just cheats infinite units this way. I beat all their armies, I siege their capital, oops, no, they now have 2 new armies, lets go back. They throw them at me, I beat them, siege their capital... aaaand repeat.

If they only got like 4-6 units that would be dismantled if the siege was lifted, I would be ok with it, but this makes me play cheesy as heck, constantly reloading until I get a spy in, then reloading some more until I get the gates opened and that just is not how I usually play.

[QuintusSertorius]

No, it can't be "turned off", you have to find it in the script, delete it, and start a new campaign. It has a cooldown, it doesn't fire turn after turn.

And demobilising the units after the siege is pretty much impossible to script, without using special units selected only for the task, which we don't have the slots for.