Garrisons

[Jaybe]

If you are between wars, then garrisons can be good when you have factories and metros. If the units were in city radius then they could be hiding (gasp!) pollution.

[Mr Justice]

yea, i never put any garrisons in cities. unless i need the happiness booast.

becuase i tend to only play archipelo maps now i tend to leave a small stack on each island. possibly 2 depending on the size and its location in relation to my core. the closer to the core and further from the Front an island is means that less units are required. i try have it so that any and all of my cities can have some units in it by the end of the turn so that a small invasion wont work. not so uselfull if they land a large stack, tis only rarely they do that tho, they tenfd to concentrate on my front line.

after RR it gets a whole lot easier. depending on distance between islands i can get away with one stack defending most of my islands. may require using boats in a chain to accomplish this.

whats crucial to this is ofcourse having your fronline somewhere else.so effectively i am relying on the AIs dumbness at sea invasions.

[joncnunn]

On garrision units:

2+ in an interor non coastal city is a waste unless they are needed for happiness. Send them to the boarders and also in a few specific coastal cities on the other side of your empire. Concentrate them in cities that are right next to enemy enemies in times of peace so they'll be ready to escore in the attacking units when war comes.

If there are no happiness nor revolt worries and the city can't possibly be taken for free before another force can intercept any incoming threats, there's no need for defensive units there.

[Vince278]

I'll try it that way in my current game. Its a variation on what I normally do anyway.

[Last Conformist]

I've often left even coastal cities empty - I've never yet seen the AI make an amphibious assault.

[Tassadar500]

What level do you play at? Usually at the higher levels like Emperor, the AI uses more amphibious attacks.

[Last Conformist]

Monarch, mostly. Never seen any in my Emperor games, either, however.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
I've often left even coastal cities empty - I've never yet seen the AI make an amphibious assault.

I've seen many small scale invasions but the AI doesn't seem to like planning and executing those massive D-Day style invasions.

[Last Conformist]

I meant I've never seen it doing an amphibious assault with marines directly into a city. Many a time has it landed troops, sometimes in respectable force, next to an empty city of mine, but they're usually wiped out before they can move, and if not, the city will be anything but empty when their turn comes around.

[Aqualung71]

I've seem AI Amphibious Marine assaults plenty of times in C3C. Just not in any useful numbers. It's more like "hey I've got a marine....let's put him on a boat and send him off to commit suicide against a few fortified infantry"

[Last Conformist]

Did they have Oil? I've got this impression the AI won't build Marines if it can build Tanks or MA.

[Aqualung71]

I didn't notice.

[Rowick Hepan]

In SP once I have knights I usually keep a max of 1 defensive unit in each city unless a city is on the front line in which case I garrison two. I then build 1 knight for each city and garrison them everywhere except the interior. I find that even with a relatively small army, if you have good roads, knights / cavalry can swarm any part of you empire within 1-2 turns and send the AI packing.

Don't know whether that would work in MP though??

[albiedamned]

I just finished a Monarch level game where I was fighting pretty much straight from the start of the Middle Ages through to the end when I launched my spaceship. Because of this I ran Fascism, and because I had lots of big cities, my allowed units # was in the mid-200's. Since Fascism allows up to 4 MP's, and since I never went over the allowed unit support, I had all my big cities garrisoned with 4. Not for defensive purposes, but because it allowed them to stay in WLTKD even as they grew up into the teens.

[Last Conformist]

Teenager cities?

I got to wonder if you hadn't been better of cranking off the luxury slider and sending those troops to the front, but MP is indeed a valid reason for maintaining a considerable troop presence in an unthreatened heartland. And unlike frontline use, it doesn't require you to upgrade the units. (Don't ask how Warriors are as good at crowd control as Mech Inf!)