What is your minimum border garrison?

[Tillan]

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.

[Xipe Totec]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[FactionHeir]

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

[Dead Guy]

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.

[jsberry]

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

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.

[Dead Guy]

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.

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.

[PseRamesses]

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.

[Xipe Totec]

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

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.

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?