I have also been thinking about the new system in comparison with the old one.
This is the summary:
Siege machine vulnerability is the key issue, which rises all sorts of unintended mechanics usage or destroys any motivation to do anything at all. People were handling this by making all sorts of pockets out of strongboxes, houses, palisades, brick-walls and etc. The defenders could place invulnerable authority objects, counter-rams, alt walls in order to defend. It's not perfect, but hey, middle-sized villages were able to successfully resist big factions, and big villages would be also raided. So it was 50 ot 50% back then. There should be an official way to defend the siege machines. Especially with the current system, when you have to take down the shield. It is morbidly unbalanced right now, if you were to camp the siege machine without using any vclaims and palisades.
Effort/success: the old system was more or less working, since the rams were not that hard to build (w3-6) + you did not have to camp them all the time. In W5 we would come to camp it 1 hour before it would be dry. Despite of the high possibility of the ram being discovered, there was still a chance that it wouldn't be seen. Back in the old times, the visitor buff was not implemented. So your reward could be quite good.
With the visitor buff, plot-based village layouts (they will persist due to socio-economical reasons solely), the time the defenders have to move out all their valuables, cost of the brimstones, the reward/effort ratio is low. Typical case:
1. Spend 2-3 hours to get to enemy village, chose a place to make a village claim or personal claim stake, so that the defenders could not see it. Optionally, build crossroads to get your troops fast;
2. Once it has dried, find out the offline time for the enemy village and build a palisade near an enemy village and put an alt with yeomanry inside it with a few stockpiles of wood. Keep the alt logged on with unkinned character alarm. Most likely, the palisade will gain enough soak to resist the defender's efforts for good 5-10 minutes. You will have that time to repair the walls with your yomanry alt.
3. When the defenders will have to go outside, because their naked alts in miner's gear cannot damage the palisade, your troops will jump in and attack them.
4. Once the palisade has dried, build your siege machines. Don't worry about the enemy village counter-rams and catapults: if you place your palisade far away from their gates, they won't be able to counter-siege your pocket. If they will break their own wall to get to your palisade, you will be able to destroy the freshly built walls by bare hands.
5. Move out and in your catapults to break the shield and keep annoying your enemies.
6. Celebrate, once you will break into an empty village with all the livestock moved out, valuables alt-vaulted and transported to somewhere else. Oh, btw, if they have inner plots, repeat everything listed above.
Effort for defenders: last worlds you would be fine if you would check your walls twice in 24 hours in 1-2 minimap distance from your village. But it was very annoying, boring, and bad mechanic in general. Nowadays you will be warned well in advance, in case you are being raided by checking the village shield. BUT! It does not defend you from ram-pocketing. On the other hand, I doubt anyone will attempt to siege you, if you live on an island, have plot-based village layout, you are a small noob village and etc.
Abusability: Both old and new siege systems encourage abuses of game mechanics. The new system encourages it even more, since you have to camp the ram for 30+ hours now, instead of 8 hours before (after repairing it).
Summing up, the new siege system is worse than the old one. It is less rewarding, more demanding than the old one. There is no palibashing as well. I would say that devs might want to reduce the number of sieges, so they would have more noobs/peaceful farmers playing and paying for subscriptions.
But there was another idea voiced by them: that sieging villages would be too costly to raid the said noobs. But, why to say no to implementation of higher social structures (kingdoms) in order to reduce the motivation to kill the noobs in your territory? Why can't we have more dynamic and less time-consuming sieges?
