Self-imposed rules to prep for naval invasions

[TinCow]

So, what about homeland forces? How larger were the garisons on Carribean islands? Could any of the grey-bar 'Flintlock Militia' forces be counted as a home guard?

That's an interesting question. Land battles in the West Indies were relatively few and far between historically, generally occurring as distractions from the main campaigns in Europe, North America, and India. For this reason, the forces devoted to them were relatively minimal. Based on foggy recollections from some general histories I have read of the Colonial period, during peacetime, I think most minor islands (i.e. Martinique, Grenada, Trinidad) had something on the order of a single regiment of professional infantry. For game purposes, this would be a single unit of Line Infantry. Dragoons would almost never been appropriate, because these islands were too small and rugged to make cavalry useful. In addition, each island would have probably had militia that were double or triple the number of the professional infantry. These units would usually be supplied with extra arms and powder by the professional garrison during a time of war, but they wouldn't assemble except when fighting was about to occur. Since the auto-generated 'firelock mob' style units seem to have no discipline and no training at all, I wouldn't say they're appropriate approximations. Instead, it seems fair to substitute the normal musket militia unit for their historical counterparts, even though they wouldn't have been present as a standing army.

So, for a small island I think a realistic garrison would be 1 Line Infantry unit and 2-3 Militia units. A general could also be added without making it strange, though it would be best if they were bad generals who were exiled there, if you wanted to keep the realism. Since there was ALWAYS a fort on these islands with moveable cannons, it would also be appropriate to include 1-2 cannon units, though I would expect that howitzers and mortars would not have been commonly found. During war, you could realistically double or triple the professional infantry garrisons, though the militia would stay the same and cavalry would be missing. On larger islands like Cuba, Hispaniola, and Jamaica, I would take the above limits and then double them in all aspects (possibly triple for Cuba).

If you want to be REALLY realistic, do not recruit any professional military units in your colonies. Historically, pretty much all professional infantry were recruited in Europe and shipped over. In the game, this is easy to simulate by recruiting in Europe and using transport fleets to shuffle them to their destinations. This would also make it realistic that if an enemy attack occurred before you could get reinforcements out there, you'd be in trouble. Of course, any 'native' or otherwise 'local' military units could be recruited in the colonies while retaining historical balance.