What do you use to garrison?

[SirGrotius]

For reasonably secure, land-locked provinces, what do you use to garrison them (considering BI with the latest patch, i.e. 1.6)?

Does this change for cities with ports?

I had heard that Peasants have a lower suppression (for lack of a better word) than other units, so even their low upkeep may not even warrant their use.

Is there a way to know how much a unit will help public order (are they all +5%, 10%, etc.)?

Finally, do certain units (excepting peasants) garrison better than others? This is sort of the meat of it, but would a very good unit garrison better than pathetic runaway spearmen and the like.

Thanks

[Watchman]

I've read the peasant half-garrison thingy is a BI only feature - but then, *those* peasants' upkeep is a fraction of the MTW ones'.

Presumably an unit's effect on public order can be fairly easily tested by moving units in and out of cities, or for example taking all the other units outside and seeing how much of the garrison effect is left.

Personally I use peasants in vanilla RTW. Cheap and cheerful. It does mean I need to haul in something better to deal with the occasional bandit/rebel stack, but them's the breaks. Frontline cities or ones in exposed locations tend to get something that can actually fight worth the term, the odd archer or two, and better walls.

In BI, whatever passes as the cheapest bulk unit in the unit roster. On the plus side these buggers are at least theoretically useful if someone actually attacks, although peasants abound too except in the largest settlements - if the limits of how many units can be kept in a city at once aren't an issue, the peasants' incomparably cheap upkeep makes them decent order-keepers.

I also assume the halved garrison effect is relative to the number of men, mind you - so 200 peasants will still have the effect of 100 soldiers, and are bound to be cheaper. At least thus far this assumption hasn't caused me problems.

[Doug-Thompson]

Peasants may be halved for effectiveness at keeping the peace compared to vanilla, but their maintenance cost droped to about 1/3 or more, as I recall. That still makes them the top order-keeping warm bodies.

However, there's more to consider for a garrison now than supression: Bandits. They breed like cockroaches now. You have to keep a few decent troops in your towns anyway. If it's a big stack of rebels, you can take a turn to gather together troops from a few towns and field a decent army.

It's an expense and a pain, but does give troops experience. You can improve their skills, then ship them off to a real war. I use the cheapest infantry I can find.

It is annoying that you don't get "Man of the Hour" promotions in BI. Rebel battles used to give me plenty of those.

[Zomby_Woof]

Actually, for just about any garrison I prefer to use a lower-end infantry unit. For instance in the vanilla I would use Hastati or Auxilia as my main garrison unit. It's probably not good in the long-run (or the short-run) but I just can't bear to train peasant and militia level units.

[red comyn]

It's probably not good in the long-run (or the short-run) but I just can't bear to train peasant and militia level units.

I always thought it was just me..... dont ever train peasants unless im moving population around.

[x-dANGEr]

In R: TW, if their is a unit that has the upkeep of 100-150 in my roster I'd put that as the garrison unit. As it will still be a good enough army to repel rebels.

[LestaT]

I'm so used to mods which had no peasant units (like in RTR). Even now when I feels like playing BI I have no more peasants (mod them out). I as Romans use limitanei for garrisons in Italy and foederatis in provinces.

[boastj]

I read in a magazine it’s the quantity not the quality of troops for garrisons

[boastj]

I found this rather mathematical thread on garrisons https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=44476 I dident understand it myself

[GiantMonkeyMan]

i hate using peasants... it is quite unrealistic and i remove them from the game except for rebels. i use 'town watch' or the equivilant as my garrison and also in 1.5/.6 i think peasants help 0.5 amount and real units help 1.0 amount for law or something like that

[professorspatula]

Peasants or the cheapest militia spear unit are typically my garrisons in BI. I also build a fort on the roads between each settlement and place one peasant unit in each. That's usually enough to reduce the brigands emerging as often. I haven't played BI that much though. I'd rather not use peasants at all, but for some factions their low upkeep is too crucial to ignore. In RTW I use town militia units or warbands for garrison duties, or in my current mod, garrison auxiliaries.

[dkdnt]

i use peasents in BI, becouse they are so cheap(18denarii per turn with sassanids). i think that they are good enough to keep public order, but for fight i rarely use them, just in cases when fight against outnumbered enemies, and in most cases those are rebels.
also, fronline cities are secured with some better troops, combination of 4 heavy infantry units, 3 archers and some cavalry(usualy family member), is good enough to secure citi until some real army come.
when play rtw i use 3 types of armies. first some cheap infantry to secure public order(peasents in low threat c regions, and better infantry in border cities). second good and expensive defensive armies, which i use to secure few regions of rebels, or in frontlines to defend new conquered cities. and finaly, highly expirienced and best possible units to form offensive army, and palinly there is nothing that can stand in their way. i dont use units that can be recruit just in some speciall places(elephants, or camel riders), becouse of constant need for full army, especially when fightning hordes(boy they are numerous).

[dkdnt]

power to the people.