What is your minimum border garrison?

We all know that the AI can't be trusted right? However very friendly, or allied, or protectorate or whatever they will stab you as soon as you appear weak. So, when you have a peaceful border province which is content with your beneficient rule etc., but is next door to full stacks of unknown dangerousness, how many line infantry can you afford to leave there as a 'hands off' deterrent? Do you rely on firelockies to save the day in a heroic noble gesture of self-sacrifice? Or do you leave an expensive garrison which can possibly fend off a full-stack, but costs more than the province earns? Or do you rely on a nearby army to march up and save the day assuming that the 'nerfed' AI wouldn't dare to actually assault? :juggle2:

In the post-patch 1.2 world I think these questions are the crux of how you fight your campaign. I always feel that I am overspending on armies and would like more cash for upgrades to factories, low taxes for growth and maybe one day a contingency fund so my armies don't desert as soon as the barbary pirates blockade one of my ports with a light galley.:wall:

So Orgahs, what is the best 'border garrison' size, and composition?

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Originally Posted by Xipe Totec

So Orgahs, what is the best 'border garrison' size, and composition?

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My favored border garrison size is zero.

Deterence is irrelevant, since the AI does not really "think."

And, there is no point at sacrificing a small force to the initial attack, because that will get costly troops killled for no gain. It won't even buy time. Better to not fight than to fight and lose. Like Frederick II said, he who tries to defend everything, defends nothing.

If I will have a defensive/safety force, it will be a central reserve rather than a border guard.

i usually keep just enough men to keep the province from rebelling. if anyone takes them away, then i can have my main army there within a couple turns, ready to whip some ass.

Few to none, because the AI will match what you are recruiting, so the bigger your garrison, the bigger the attacking force.
Add to that the AI has unlimited funds, so there's no point in you wasting yours to essentially gift them a bigger garrison.

As was said:

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Originally Posted by jsberry

Like Frederick II said, he who tries to defend everything, defends nothing.

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So, I pick and choose. For example, playing as Prussia, I consider Berlin and Konigsberg as my crucial provinces that cannot be sacrificed, especially Berlin since that's the only trade harbor Prussia has in the early game. I build forts in both and keep 2-3 line units in each + some militia. This mix can defeat pretty much any AI army that gets thrown at the fort. For the rest of the Prussian provinces, they just get garrisons that keep them from rebelling.

It's a different story when I play as GB in India, for example. Each province there is worth quite a bit of cash (in income), so I tend to garrison the border provinces. However, there is a trick. The upkeep of sepoys is very cheap for GB. Practically, sepoys are equal to militia in terms of upkeep but get all the line infantry drills. Give them the protection of a city fort and voila: you've got the perfect British garrison unit...

Playing as British or UP, if I get Gibraltar (and do not expand from there), I definitely garrison that province. My trade depends on the ability to host a fleet there... This is especially true for UP. A hostile AI ship stack position on the trade artery running by Spain can effectively wipe out ALL the UP trade.

for border towns next to friendlies, i usually put 2-4 units. for border towns next to enemies, 5-6, plus an army in the area.
for inland units, usually 1-2. my capital, in fact, only has one line unit, and a crazy amount of townfolk militia, or whatever those grey bars mean.

Depends what I thinks needed. My Swedish campaign I have 4/5 army's dotted around Europe being both garrison/defense units and attack units. Thats spread over my border which runs across the north to the dead sea. Having said that, there isnt to many weak spots there.

My English campaign has two stacks in america, that were both garrison/attack duty, and that was it, almost everything else went into my navy.

Be careful if you leave a conquered province ungarrisoned: check that it has some grey firelockie bars at least. As Sweden I had conquered Muscovy and turned it into an industrial powerhouse of immense wealth. All resistance had long gone and the Muscovites were just loving listening to Abba and shopping at IKEA. :2thumbsup:

I decided to send the army from Moscow south to conquer Tatariya, and as there were no Russian armies anywhere near Muscovy I felt confident to send the whole stack and build a couple of new units to take over garrison duty. Guess what happened when I hit the end turn button. :inquisitive:

Half a stack of streltsy militia emerged from the forest right where I had a preacher man waving his bible, and took Moscow without a fight. :furious3:

They weren't built anywhere, they just spontaneously appeared as a rebel army. I don't know if this is specific to Muscovy or happens just in the stroppy major power capital provinces. Anyone else seen this one?

It left poor General Bjorn Olafsson backpeddling like Napoleon in 1812. :embarassed:

You probably forgot to take them out during the last rebellion.

I only leave dragoons to keep order, and move my dedicated armies around to deal with incursions.

In one campaign i wanted to play a little with defending in sieges, so I placed a small garrison in the first level of city fortification in a border province. I think I had a few units of line, 2 mortars and 2 howitzers. Never got to defend too many times but that setup can basically annihilate the AI. I put the freebie units on the walls to man the cannon there, and keep my line units facing the walls in the center. If the enemy get onto the walls I lose nothing and they get shot while making their way down to the center. If they breach the walls, well you know the story I guess. Just move the infantry to box them in at the breach and shoot them while in melee and you get a massive rout. All the while they're being blown up by explosive shells.

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Originally Posted by Dead Guy

I only leave dragoons to keep order, and move my dedicated armies around to deal with incursions.

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That's what I do too. Chewed-up dragoon regiments are best, of course, because it's the unit number rather than the soldier number that keeps the peace (unlike MTW) and thus cheaper.

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

You probably forgot to take them out during the last rebellion.

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There had been a rebellion about 15 years earlier, with a 5 or 6 unit army which vanished without trace. This was 9 units of identical Gorodskye Streltsy. Can a rebel army hide in the woods for 15 years, growing in strength and then attack when it finally judges the time is ripe for a Tet Offensive? If so then I have seriously underestimated the quality of this game's strategic AI. I suppose it should be possible to test the theory by moving a full stack into such a conquered and pacified capital to remove the grey bars, then moving it out like I did. If such an event is scripted it should be repeatable. Hats off to CA for sneakiness if that's true. Otherwise hats off to CA for making rebel generals have good judgement, even if regular army ones don't. On the last point I recently had a Polish rebel army emerge near Warsaw which did not move or attack, even though there were plenty of cities nearby with 1 or 2 unit garrisons, and plenty of woods to hide in.

I'll see what I can find out.:inquisitive:

I've done some testing with Warsaw in my Austria campaign and I can't reproduce the complete loss of grey bars. When I move a full stack out it seems to leave at least one grey bar behind. The Streltsy army took Moscow without me getting a chance to defend it, so it can't have had any garrison at all. It did have first level fortification. Perhaps we need to try to understand what governs the size of the grey-bar militia garrison in all circumstances. Moving a full stack out I always got one bar. After that I moved 2 cavalry back in and the one grey bar became 2 grey bars. I have noticed before that the number of greys in ungarrisoned provinces does not seem to be affected in any logical or consistent way by population size or how long you have held the province. Anyone else got any thoughts about this?

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Originally Posted by jsberry

That's what I do too. Chewed-up dragoon regiments are best, of course, because it's the unit number rather than the soldier number that keeps the peace (unlike MTW) and thus cheaper.

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Yup :p I also never retrain or disband the initial pikemen you get for that same reason... practically free garrison if you manage to get them beat up enough but not so much that their unit is wiped.

Faction Heir and Prussian Iron sums up my strat. Never as deterrant, only as rebel reducing and use my cash for proper armies instead. There are however always exceptions like Berlin as Prussia, Amsterdam as UP etc but there I always keep a proper army close by.

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Originally Posted by jsberry

My favored border garrison size is zero.

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Likewise.

The AI should be intelligent enough to assess the likely consequences of starting a war with another faction. Not limited to short term assessments of its chance to Ninja a provincial capital.

The fact that its doesn't do this is a product of the 'player hate routine' which doesn't take anything into account other than the number of other factions you happen to be at war with. As such garrisons are irrelevant, you will be attacked anyway regardless of the the AI factions chances of victory, the garrisons you have paid to maintain, or the overall economic and military strength of your faction.

I usually put a few decent infantry units in the city if I can. Just to prevent raiding parties from being able to seize cities.

More often then not, I'll have what constitutes an army in a border area and I just split it up to garrison all the towns closest to the border. It keeps the raiders at bay and in the event a large stack comes roaming th rough I just reatreat everyoen back, concentrate/assemble and give battle.

I may be a bit paranoid but I have lost count of the number of times I have been DOW'ed by a new neighbour on the same turn as I first moved the conquering stack out of the city, usually leaving a couple of line infantry as the garrison. Obviously it depends on your specific situation what you can afford: how many border provinces you have, how many active war-fronts and how much trade income you are generating. At one point in my Austria campaign I had a full-on war going with Prussia, Poland, Russia and the Ottomans. It was hard to maintain even two decent armies and there was no way I could afford more than a couple of units to defend Vienna . In the end I concluded that the only way out was to fend off the Ottomans and Russians with a few units in the South, and use my 2 main armies to steamroll Prussia and Poland. Fortunately it all went fine, but if the Venetians or Bavarians had attacked Vienna I'd have been struggling to pay the rent.:embarassed:

Once I get a decent income, which I got from Hannover, Berlin and Konigsberg in this example, I put 4 line infantry in my border towns and build fortifications. I do believe this can deter AI random aggression to some extent, and if attacked you have a good chance against even quite a large force the way the AI 'storms a fortress'. Pikemen are worth a lot more defending a breach than their cheap upkeep and good as cheap police. I rarely have much in the kitty in the first 25 years of any campaign, but I don't like to ever lose a province I have invested buckets of ducats in, to some dishonourable backstabbing very friendly chancer. I also want my conquest armies to be free to strike at the enemy's heart: the rich provinces with barracks etc. to stop them building quality units. :smash:

In my French campaign I wanted to focus on America, but Prussia and Austria wouldn't leave me alone. I didn't want to build an empire in Eastern Europe so I used one army to go round capturing their territories and handing them to Saxony and the Italian States, who were only too glad to become my protectorates in return for rich territories. Eventually they were both up to about six provinces each, and of course paid me protection money for the priviledge of defending my Eastern Front and burning all the heretics. I also needed a European army to fight Spain who backstabbed me when I turned republic, so once my satellites were secure I could pop down to Madrid to 'put my brother on the throne' :laugh4: