[Jazzepi]

I think it's fine as is. Historically completely surrounding a fortress was a difficult and time consuming practice. Sieging a castle was avoided if at all possible (there was actually an intricate system of parley where time lines for the siege could be established, whereby the occupants would surrender if help did not arrive in time, and/or time given for a vassal to ask his liege for instructions), and sieging involved spreading your forces thin to encircle the entirety of the castle's perimeter.

From a realistic perspective since your forces are clearly storming the castle from the front, whole hog, I see no reason why this should involve the death of all the occupants. Castles were built with the idea that one could retreat from one secure area to the next as they fell, allowing a small contingent of soldiers to inflict massive casualties on a relatively much larger force.

From a game play perspective I see no problem with the fact that once you've conquered all the territories around the fortress, your reward is that all the defenders die, and your punishment for not doing so is that some of the defenders might escape. By removing the escaping of the defenders, you remove an interesting choice that the seigers have to make.

I know, multiple times, I've made particular strategic moves to cut off retreat lines.

Ask Lazy Perfectionist. He was playing LA Atlantis against my LA R'yleh. I was able to corner his go, and attack both flanking provinces at the same time. Though none of my 300 + lobo guards could even damage his like 35 defense 23 protection God who also had Luck, they managed to kill enough other guys to force him to retreat.

Imagine the same scenario in a castle. It would be a lot less interesting from a gameplay perspective if all I had to do was pin him down and then route his forces. Instead I would have had to, quite literally, surround the castle.

I also think it allows for interesting scenarios. Maybe where you have two armies. One inside of a castle, one outside, and you conquer a single territory outside a castle, allowing your first army to attack the invaders, and then retreat back into that territory, thereby surrendering the castle, but preserving your forces.

Jazzepi