keep troops in or out of my cities?

[bnek]

as the title says, is it a good idea to keep my troops inside or outside of my cities?

[SomeNick]

Welcome

Not sure what the intention of your question is but I'll give it a go.

If you stay in city/settlement >

Enemy armies that sit in territory boundary of settlement cause unrest to your population and affect income of the settlement.

There is a drain on the settlements income to support army. However Amry ensures hardly any unrest unless there are other factors involved ( enemy spies, public growth/health buildings required etc).

Settlements can fall to enemy army without a fight if your settlement is sieged long enough and you don't attempt to attack (sally forth) and break the siege.

That particular garrisoned Army also isn't contributing to the expansion of your faction, or gaining experience unless it is holding a part of your overall territory against the tide or invasion of an enemy faction.

An example for you would be my little Greek Cities campaign where I have sat a medium sized army of hoplites mostly, in Apollonia holding off the Romans for nearly 100 years now. In the meantime while the Romans have been concentrating on that settlement and dealing with my Navies pestering them everywhere, I have been eliminating Pontus and Egypt.

Armies outside cities reduce the presence/frequency of rebels and hold off enemy armies from sieging your settlements.
Also expanding your territory = Army experience = Gained Settlements = Income = More Armies.


Hope this helped : )

[bnek]

thanyou kind sir

[Somebody Else]

As SomeNick said, an army in a settlement is not being particularly useful in an expansionist way, the only benefits being suppressing unrest and defending a frontline city against repeated enemy assaults.

In general then, I would only keep a combat army in a settlement if it's only just been conquered and hence needs the garrison to quell unrest and fight off any retaliation, until enough peasants and suchlike have been trained to keep the place in order, allowing your field army to wander off and beat some more settlements into submission. Interior settlements need little more than peasants, maybe one or two proper units - just in case something sneaks by. Or if you have a frontier town that you don't intend to expand beyond for a while - a decent army there should be able to hold off most incursions by the AI (well, in BI anyway, as they now seem to like conducting assaults).

Basically, field armies - keep in the field. Garrisons, keep in towns. Field armies would (assuming basic common sense) be your enemy bashing strongmen, garrisons would be cheap peasant types, and incompetant family members (though, they're usually better as a handy dandy heavy cavalry force to go with your lead general).

[Mangudai]

It's important to keep your family members in cities part of the time in order for them to reproduce.

[Upxl]

I was wondering about that.
Do family members breed/get married faster if there in a city?

[Haudegen]

They don´t get any children if kept outside the cities all the time. The trigger for a birth is only activated when a family member ends his turn in a settlement. Marriage however can happen anytime.

Once in an Armenian campaign, I kept my whole royal family in the field for some decades as a mobile defense force and was wondering, why the gods cursed me as I got no new children ...