Garisson your cities and castles?

[KARTLOS]

My thoughts with the question was to get some general advice regarding defending castles/cities.
When I played france, I didn't use archers at all, but now playing the Byzantine, I have a lot of trebizond archers around.

But as econ21 says, when you're up to 3-4 swords, spears and archers, your above a half stack, and suddenly, it's more of an army than a garisson...

I've heard though that even peasant archers are valuable when defending a castle.
Is militia any good (except for italian militia that I know is good) for defense? Or should one use better troops?

//Matthew

it goes without saying that any city should have at least its full implement of free upkeep milita troops. (obviously they provide a public order bonus as well)

[Moah]

Of course as Scotland you get Pike Militia and Heavy Pike Militia as free upkeep in cities - they can really hold a breach! Vastly superior to spears.

Watch out for enemy archers though.

And I haven't tried them on Castle walls yet so I don't know how effective they are against ladders and siege towers. The AI keeps abandoning sieges against me so I haven't tested them as much as I'd like. I also find it hard to curb my natural instinct of "Relief army! Attack the rear!" to drive them off.

[dismal]

I would first differentiate between "internal" and "border" cities.

An internal (i.e. one that has no border with another faction) city tends to face about zero chance of being attacked. These also tend to be mostly converted and have minimal unrest issues. I usually garrison these with no more than free militia units - about 50/50 spear militia and some sort of ranged milita unit. Though it harldy matters.

Border cities I tend to have garrisoned with professional armies. Generally, with whatever army recently took them. Usually, when I take a city I leave the army there while I start building churches, and maybe a defensive spy. After a couple turns, I'll start making militia so I can move my professional army on to the next target. I might have to leave as much as half a stack behind for a while to keep order until things settle down, but eventually those border cities become internal cities if I keep moving forward. Castles can be drawn down much more quickly, and generally captured castles are quickly put to work retraining/replacing troops that are lost or need to be left behind for garrison/order issues.

There is a bit of an art to when it is time to "de-militarize" a city. I might be more or less aggressive about it depending on how much I need the troops elsewhere. I suspect this is where I am not as aggessive as the hardcore rushers, who would just keep pushing forward leaving as small a garrison as possible even in their just conquered cities. The phrase "the best defense is a good offense" applies quite well to TW games.

With the patch's increased naval invasions, the AI has a jones for certain cities that it will keep trying for over and over. These cities require a little more garrison, but I find that even 8 or 9 units of mixed archer/spear militia are usually up to the task of defending walls.

I also am quite methodical about building watchtowers so I get plenty of warning about potential attacks. With the new multi-unit training queues, you can grow a garrison very significantly within a couple turns if you need to.

[Foz]

Several people have suggested keeping minimal garrisons and instead keeping larger armies nearby to aid against sieges. This is a pretty good idea from what I've seen, but I have a somewhat different take on it. Primarily, I use some cavalry for this purpose, freeing up the bulk of my forces to continue the offensive. They have the best movement on the campaign map, and so represent the best chance of covering multiple provinces at once. Likewise they enter battle in great position to flank the enemy when alleviating a siege, and with greater speed they can influence the engagement at a much earlier time than most other units could conceivably do so. It's a similar tactic to keeping cavalry by the side door(s) of a settlement when defending so they can go right out in the field and wreak havoc on the enemy... except it spreads the same cavalry units across multiple settlements, and therefore should be more efficient. Fighting on multiple fronts is an immensely useful position to force upon the enemy when he sieges you, and cavalry (whether in the city garrison or coming to the rescue) seem to be the best way to get the job done.

[dumas]

This is cheap, but effective.

I normally have about 4 archer/xbow militia (or whatever the number the town can support for free) and 2 trebuchets. If the attacking enemy doesn't have trebuchets, I greet them on the first turn and fire away from behind the walls. Even if the enemy have catapults, the AI seem to get them out of range 90% of the time and they just sit in the middle of their formations and not firing (but getting hit by my longer ranged trebuchets). If the enemy catapults do fire at my walls or if they have trebuches, I get a group of archers outside in loose formation and the catapults will always change the target to the archer unit outside. Then, I make that unit run along the wall to dodge the catapult fire and also to make sure that the missed catapult boulders don't land in the same part of the wall. Enemy calvary don't seem to charge as long as the running archer units stick pretty close to the wall, and even if they do, they'll be heavily damaged by the wall defence and your other archers. Enemy archers are likely to follow your archers outside, but their formation will be facing the running archers and in the range of your archers on the walls. If your group of archers don't survive before the enemy catapult runs out of ammo, send another one out.

By the end, your 2 trebuchets would have cut down a full stack of enemy to less than half while you sacrifice one or two of your archer units. Added bonus is that half the time, you end up killing the enemy general and they just leave the field lifting the seige. Hopefully, you have at least a half-stack of "real" army roaming around to clean up the mess on the next turn.

[Skott]

Personally, I find defending in the streets the easier thing to do if I'm unable to sally out and meet the enemy before they assault. In most cases the enemy puts holes on either side of the gatehouse and then tends to destroy all towers before advancing into the city. This is usually too many holes for me to try and defend against so I take advantage of the city's winding streets (they usually arent straight like in RTW) and plug them with lots of infantry with cats and archers to the rear. The AI doesnt use flanking side streets like they did in RTW. In most cases it tries to advance down just one avenue and sometimes down two but in most cases it selects the most direct path. This is easier to defend against. You can defend the walls and have men standing on them till the end but whoever controls the city square is the victor.

Mass men in depth is the trick to street fighting. In RTW you didnt need to use depth as much because the cavalry in RTW wasnt as strong as it is in MTW2. In this game AI cavalry can just walk thru troops (which is bs IMHO but nothing one can do about it) so you have to make sure your troops have depth instead of one solid line. Basically just plug the street with infantry masses. If you have cavalry of your own you can run them around behind to hit the enemy in the rear but if you are forced to withdraw them be sure not to retreat them back around to your city square because the pursuing enemy forces may follow. Have them withdraw somewhere away from the city square until the pursuing enemy gives up the chase.

[SnowlyWhite]

militia for cities(how many are free upkeep, spear militia as they have 75 men - not that riots are the problem that it was in rtw, but... out of rtw habbit:p), 2-3 pessies in castles.

In all honesty... the ai attacks are obvious from so many miles away, you have plenty of time to get back(ok, I'm watchtower obsessed, and 90% of the time I have a spy in every enemy city on my border). Also, the ai NEVER(or ok, in ~10 long campaigns, I never noticed it) sieges you when you're already attacking one of his cities unless you share a huge border.
Combine the above with the ai's passion for carrying tons of siege eq/artilery which makes his armies crawl and you should have plenty of warning. Also, as a side note, never saw him assaulting in the 1st turn(even when he has siege eq., he'll just sit there patiently to build his ram only to bombard your walls in the next turn...).

When I just conquered the city:

- it already has a trained spy in it(I keep training them till they reach max. - just go in the city again and again every turn) so the chance he gets in a spy vs. my guy with 9-10 skill is close to nil(not that he uses the opened gates anyway, but...);
- I redo my units, and what needs training I gradually send back to retrain(3/turn, or whatever, so the garnisson is all the time still close to full);
- in the mean time I build churches/townhalls(everything useful that the ai never builds);
- stack is back to full, some militias are trained, go for the next city; or stay there, whatever...

When I don't want to attack the faction and it's obvious that he prepares to attack me:

- 6-7 spear militia; ok, prolly I'd use more if it'd be very late in the game, however, very late ingame you have so many troops that it hardly matters(and he has so few:p) plus probably you can field 2/3rds of a stack in any desired city in 1 turn when you feel he's about to attack(each city/castle produces 3 units, and you should have at least 2 cities near enough).
- 1-2 pessie archers(highly optional);
- 1-2 cav. units(to chase the routers). Mailed knights or whatever should do just fine.

This should hold perfectly against anything bar mongol/timurids, but those are another story anyway. When he sieges, I just drop all the imagination I might have and just blob my militias to repel his attack. He does 2 holes on the left wall section near the gate, 2 on the right, so I can put my schildoms there in the deploy fase as he always does them in exactly the same place. Make sure the units are close enough to the wall where I know he'll make the holes in order to allow only few soldiers in at a time. Abit on the left/right too, so he can't charge at all, because he'll have to go around the wall abit.
If he has a general, lucky me, because you'll kill him very fast(general being mounted and the ai charging like the french at crecy, needless to say the general reaches the hole 1st and insists in fighting your spearmen till he dies - I know that a bg unit can mop a spear militia like no tommorow on open field with charge, however he can't charge here).
If he doesn't have siege machines... you fight on the walls, which already gives a huge bonus... I put 4 or so militias on the walls, and the other 2-3 are sent where it seems to be hotter. If I want to be nasty, I pull my cav. out through the gate and charge in his back(main gate is just fine, he'll ignore you anyway - that suppossing he didn't use the ram, if he did... side gate). Charge in the back, his units already worn out abit, morale penality due to them being in a big blob... they break on charge like no tommorow...

[kublikhan3]

Unless I am defending against a crusade or Jihad, I keep just enough troops to maintain order. Everything else gets dumped into my field armies. This lets you take the fight to them, instead of sitting around with an expensive garrison waiting to get attacked.

[JCoyote]

If you have access to them, sword militia are great for defending walls, and inexpensive.