Quote Originally Posted by Guillaume le Batard
I have had to put significant resources into maintaining large garrisions (town watch) in many of my "foreign" settlements. The fact that I was down to four family members for a while (gah!) really did not help my management efforts.
Try replacing your town watch with peasants, the peasants are cheaper to recruit and are bigger so will give you a bigger garrison bonus per unit (i.e. less units to get the same effect)