[Arryn]

Originally posted by Zen:
Those Castles could have not been repaired from their Last siege, had bonuses to siegeing in some way or otherwise been able to batter down whatever fortress you had on their own. This is remarkably true if you've been fighting long drawn out wars on multiple fronts and your castles are in a constant state of disrepair.

Nice try, but no. It was the first castle on my frontier that the raiders got to, a castle that had been built only a few turns before (so it was at 100% strength), and if the raiders had some bonus, it should have shown up when they got to my second castle, which held out with a single Seithkona in residence for the 2 turns it took my reserves to arrive and lift the siege. It was this experience, which defied what I'd been led to believe about castle defense, that encouraged me to always keep defenders in residence at keeps along hostile borders.