What type of garrison / army would better deter the AI from attacking?

[drmihnea]

Hi,

I'm playing as the Romani using VH (campaign) / M (battles) on the Alexander engine and am at the moment in the Polybian era.

I'm following Quintus Sertorius's guide of being a proper Roman. In the guide he states that one should leave one's cities garrisoned lightly, and only with locally-recruitable troops, if possible. Compensationally, one should station permanent armies in the field to guard many such regions.

Will the AI be deterred more by a large border city garrison or by a small city garrison coupled with a decent army around? I am paying 200 mnai / turn to each AI faction I share the border with. With most of these AI factions I have alliances as well.

Cheers,
Mihnea

[Arjos]

The only units I've seen deterring the AI from attacking, were katapeltai/ballistae (seriously, put two in your royal stack and full AI stacks, will retreat lol)...
Everything else the AI will eventually attack it. Maybe a bigger force will prolong that time, as forts do at chokepoints. But the latter gets too costy, I'm afraid the AI won't be scared off by 20 pantodapoi for example :P

[Ca Putt]

does it make a difference wether you station the katapeltai in a fort or a city?

[Arjos]

I deployed them in forts and they did work, but I've never garrisoned cities heavily (at most 6 units), unless in war-zones, so I don't really know if they work aswell...
I'd imagine it doesn't make any difference, since the katapeltai make AI stacks retreat even in the open...

[Atraphoenix]

Once I had conquered all mesopotamian Seleucid lands and built forts in each bridge end on my side (soil) I had filled them with mercenaries full stacks I do not know why but Selucid AI avoided them for a long time (must be with alex.exe). Also most of the time AI lifts sieges to forts so that makes you breathe a bit but costs much. So I had quit the defensive thing after reform thing and attacked and overrun whole syria and later egypt.

[drmihnea]

Thanks a lot for the replies!

I was thinking along the lines of having something akin to the Comitatenses of the late Roman Empire. A mobile response force covering a few regions (2 to 4) that can reach any invading army in a single turn. It should be about half a stack (the Roman part of the legion without auxiliaries) and be augmented with mercenaries in the event of a large invasion.

After such an incursion, the enemy army is hopefully defeated and a punitive raid is initiated against the offender. Afterwards, the army returns to its home region, retrains its Roman troops, reestablishes its fort and demobilizes the mercenaries.

[moonburn]

i always use the trap sistem forts alongside the borders

they attack the fort you move an army there and when it can reach that point in 1 turn you attack and loose on purpose and when the attacking army gets the fort you besiege it and kill all of those who dared to attack you

great way to get rid of pesky enemy generals or if your more of a sort of a sadist towards those dudes doing your daughters get your own family members garrisoning those forts to get rid of them

normally border forts lightly garrisoned gives you a great advantage in terms of gaining time before they attack you and in case of an attack it alows you to either move an army garrison the nearest cities properly or assemble a proper army to counter the danger

however there´s always weakpoints like in kallika or in the belgium border where the marshlands in winter are passable

another problem is when a "friendly" or not so "friendly army" gets behinde your forts like the karties in italy or makedonians in mikra asia wich then makes it dificult to get rid of them and can prompt a new war with allies

you can always teleport them but i was never any good at using the console

someone should create a script to allow for a better console use to teleport a few armies around to allow the passage of armies particulary when you´re fighting against the koinon hellenon

[Atraphoenix]

If you garrison them (border forts) with horse archers which are very cheap and how to use/abuse them :-) , you can easily wipe out a levy army in one turn, a medium armoured army in 2 turns but not elites if AI sends you elites it is an emergency - AFAIK AI just do this on alex.