Garrisoning

[beresford]

I've seen it suggested that garrisoning every city you take is not the way to play the game. If you don't, you get the 'local citizenry have rebelled' event or one of the AI's invisible raiders walks in. And then your rail net is disrupted. I've also had instances where I have had a large force outside of a city and an enemy unit has walked into the area and occupied the city (where I had just built a depot). So even with a big stack in an area, I detach a brigade to garrison the city.

I garrisoned with the smallest or most damaged brigade I had, then replaced them with sailors or marines later, then replaced them with militia. It took quite a bit of micromanagement to figure out when to replace a higher-value unit and it is easy to accidentally leave them outside the city. I think some garrisons changed to attck posture and I had to keep changing them back to 'defend'.

[Bertram]

I tend to garrison quite o lot of towns, as I recon that chasing after the raiding units costs at least as much as the garrisons.

But even if you garrison all towns, you still cant stop raiders. They will disrupt the rail between the towns, and recover at harbors or slip back behind their lines.

So I tend to garrison the depots, get some units in the more important towns, and leave a few reaction forces (cavalary usually) scattered around. And then you need some units to repair the railroads. It keeps you busy, though it usually is more an annoyance then a real problem.

[boboneilltexas]

I've seen it suggested that garrisoning every city you take is not the way to play the game. If you don't, you get the 'local citizenry have rebelled' event or one of the AI's invisible raiders walks in. And then your rail net is disrupted. I've also had instances where I have had a large force outside of a city and an enemy unit has walked into the area and occupied the city (where I had just built a depot). So even with a big stack in an area, I detach a brigade to garrison the city.

I garrisoned with the smallest or most damaged brigade I had, then replaced them with sailors or marines later, then replaced them with militia. It took quite a bit of micromanagement to figure out when to replace a higher-value unit and it is easy to accidentally leave them outside the city. I think some garrisons changed to attck posture and I had to keep changing them back to 'defend'.

Also depends upon whether you want to fight to keep the town. When I do raids deep behind the lines, I just take supplies, destroy depots and rails and capture any choice units wandering my way. I picked up some nice art. units that way once and you can sometimes get supply trains. Then I ride to the next location that may be unguarded. Normally ports are unguarded if you need supplies.