Thu Dec 12, 2013 1:23 am
I would also be interested in what others do, but for myself I would put it in a city or outside depending on what goals I was trying to achieve by building it. If I was building it as part of a larger static force to permanently protect the city, for example, I would put it with the force in the city. This force will be much smaller than a typical RUS army, though, so it will be important to use the city's/fort's much smaller frontage to my advantage. Also, since the battery can't move out of the region, nothing is risked by putting in the city, unlike an army which can then be trapped in the region. (The same can't be said for the static force, of course. But less is risked with that smaller force than an army.)
If on the other hand I am building the positional battery to protect a strategic choke point that I will be covering with my mobile armies, then I will put it outside the city. This is so my mobile army can link up with it and it can support them. I would probably put it in the army stack, though I don't think that should really matter, other than if it has a command penalty by itself (do positional batteries get command penalties? I have a memory that they don't, but could be wrong.) I should note that I almost never build a battery for this second reason, because I want to have an elastic defense and be able to maneuver away without the risk of giving the enemy a nice battery that I paid for. With regard to the first reason, protecting the city/resource/whatever, that has to be valuable enough for me to risk losing the battery to the enemy, but I do build these from time to time.