Castle enhancements

[Roark]

The only problems that I can see with the hub defence strategy are the following:

1. Upsets to unit production (specifically units like cannons, ships etc, that take 3 years. These revert back to zero if the province is removed from your control.)
2. Upsets to building construction (19/20 years completed for a citadel. Suddenly you are attacked and the province removed from your control... BAM!! Back to zero, mate.)
3. Retaking mountainous or river provinces the following turn.
4. Reassigning governorship (more an annoyance than anything)...

Apart from that, it's a highly economical way of guarding one's borders.

I personally use a combination of cheap unit spam (as a numbers deterrent) for frontier provinces, and miniscule garrisons + bawdyhouse spies for provinces that are "internal" within the empire.

This has worked really well for HRE because of the geography of the Empire...

[EatYerGreens]

I agree with all of those points but, if you copy what the AI does and shuttle a large force to and fro between a pair of provinces, leaving a minimal garrison behind each time, then you have at least a 50% chance of being in the right place at the right time. With luck, the AI will auto-retreat. Otherwise it could be you get to have that battle you always wanted to have with them only you didn't want to be the one initiating conflict, or you didn't want to stretch outwards beyond your means, into their land, or you wanted to fight on home ground anyway, to make the most of defensive terrain advantages.

It ties in nicely with what I'd just read in the Sun Tzu thing. Where do you want your enemy to attack and where do you not want him to attack. Do the long builds and training in the province where your happiest to 'park' your big stack and keep the small garrison in the place where attacking to retake will be on the easier of the two choices of terrain. (ie the big force is parked on the best defensive terrain as well).

Again, with luck, the AI will twig what's going on and won't attack either place because it knows it cannot hold on to any gains for any length of time.

Most players will manage to baffle the AI by attacking two places at once and calling off the 'feint' attack, something the AI, mercifully, never seems to do for itself.

[AggonyDuck]

The only problems that I can see with the hub defence strategy are the following:

1. Upsets to unit production (specifically units like cannons, ships etc, that take 3 years. These revert back to zero if the province is removed from your control.)
2. Upsets to building construction (19/20 years completed for a citadel. Suddenly you are attacked and the province removed from your control... BAM!! Back to zero, mate.)
3. Retaking mountainous or river provinces the following turn.
4. Reassigning governorship (more an annoyance than anything)...

Well some common sense is required too when implementing this. Basically the hub system relies on your frontier provs being just frontier provs, while you do most of the buildings and unit production in your hub province. Basically I personally only build my frontier provs up to castle+catapult towers and some economic upgrades. More just ain't viable for them.
About the third point, you're correct with the retaking of river provs and mountaneous provs. That's why it's actually better to have a medium sized army defending these provs, because they're not worth abandoning.

[Roark]

OK, gotcha. Thanks guys.

I have to confess... I've only started actively analysing the "border crossing" data within the last month of play....