I've been a noob since OB and have never taken a character past 46. As such I've never participated in a siege (looking to fix this soon). While looking at a video of a siege in my server I noticed that the tags that specify the deffenders and the attackers had different icons on them (ie not just the blue sword and the red shield). I also saw people that were in the same
alliance that did not have any relation tags on them.
So my question is do the tags also imply what kind of class you are? Would there be any reason why an ally would be no relation to you? (other than they were not signed up for that particular siege).
On a side note, I saw that no one attacked the walls and was told about the bug with the golems and the cost of the hog cannons. So does this mean that the general strategy for taking a castle is the same basic zerg one from Prelude?
All attackers and defenders have the blue and red icons you saw. The flags and crowns indicate clan leaders. Icons do not indicate class.
Golems and cannons do work well, but are expensive. Still, its sometimes easier to punch a hole in the wall than try to tear the gates down. Zergs are still fairly common tactics.
Individual clans have to sign up to defend (or attack) before a deadline (think 24hrs before siege?) and signed up defenders also has to be confirmed by the castle lord to actually be tagged as defenders.
Walls are valid targets and ways in. Tactics often includes using the relations of clans and alliances and other castles that have sieges at the same time, to get the zergs to split up or lure them to other castles. You can for instance prepare a castle by taking down the doors and walls by force early, then go for another castle and at the last few minutes return and take the first one... lots of simple strategy to use...
The hands are propably ordinary wartags from clanwars. And if you are a castle-owning clan, you cant sign up for other sieges. That is usually the case if you see people from the same ally without any siege icon over their heads.