How do I prevent my garrison from sallying when I don't want it to?

In my first game. Great fun so far. Just finished conquering the British Isles with my evil English longbow army. But I ran into an issue along the way; not sure if its a bug or just a quirk in the game. After capturing Edinborough, I left a small garrison, including the ballista I brought along, and started my main army marching towards Dublin. Next turn, a Scottish Army came down and put Edinborough under siege. So rather than keep going towards Dublin, I brought my main army back and attacked the Scottish army to raise the seige. Well, after the battle began, my itty bitty garrison showed up on the far corner of the map as "reinforcements". Well, those wily Scots just turned away from my main army and ran down the smaller force, including my only ballista:furious3: I went back to the saved game a couple times trying to figure out how to prevent my garrison from automatically sallying out, but its there as reinforcements everytime and no way to turn it off, as best I can tell. Anyone know how to make the garrison stay safely behind the walls when you are relieving a seige with a different army? Thanks.

As long as the enemy army is besieging a settlement the said settlement will always aid in the battle. The only thing you can do is attempt to rush the enemy army with your main force and hope you reach them before they reach your reinforcements. Also by repostitioning your main army to attack from as close to you settlement as possible your reinforcements may spawn closer to your side of the battlefield. Also you can try controlling reinforcements to move them out of the way but you will need to attack with your main army as well when you have artillery in your reinforcing army. I think that all makes sense.

This a really annoying "quirk". I think the least they could do was feature the settlement on the battle map so you can leave them behind the walls. They show the settlement when you are sallying out with the garrison so I think it could have been done.

Thanks. I was afraid of that. Incidently, when it happened, I had my longbow-heavy main army drawn up in a nice defensive position way back on big hill, ready to slaughter the Scots Halidon Hill-style. By the time I noticed that the Scots had turned around and were attacking the other direction, it was too late. Now that I know that the garrison will always sally out, I guess I can just plan for and it shouldn't be a big deal. I think that your suggestion of bringing up the relieving army closer to the settlement so the reinforcements spawn closer to the main force is probably the way to go in the future. It's still annoying, though.

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Originally Posted by Passion

This a really annoying "quirk". I think the least they could do was feature the settlement on the battle map so you can leave them behind the walls. They show the settlement when you are sallying out with the garrison so I think it could have been done.

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Agreed. I wonder if there's a mod for that. Or.... I need to try it, but maybe if I had attacked with the garrison first instead of the relieving army, with the relieving army on the brown spot by the enemy army, the settlement would be on the battle map and the relieving army would show up as the reinforcement. Anyone know if that's true?

You can sally and any army nearby will act as reinforcements. The battle map will be on the settlement tile so it is possible to hide in your army in the settlement until your reinforcements arrive. The only problem with that is if you reinforcements are delayed or don't show up at all your are left in quite a predicament.

One thing you could always do as well is have your garrison withdraw from battle thus accomplishing what you wished... However, be careful not to lose that battle as your garrison would be consided KIA and thus your city would be free for the taking by the Scots...

The only way i can think of to stop this is with a night fighting general, as night fights automatically discount reinforcements. The idea is that you can attack multiple stacks with one army, and fight them one at a time rather than all together. Therefore, it would work the other way, and your garrisoned units will keep still. I think.:inquisitive: anybody fancy testing this?

I guess this sallying issue could be seen as realistic in a way - the besieged garrison see a relieving army on the way and say 'hooray' we're saved, they rush out of the castle they've been cooped up in to get their revenge on the besiegers, but then get a surprise when they're attacked.