Garrison Units with the Romanii

[Rip4im]

So in my first run with Rome i have been using Triarii to garrison towns but they are a bit expensive, fewer in numbers and harder to recruit. Recently i have started a second run and this time i'm using levies as garrison, they are cheap, easy to recruit and they provide less public order. But i use them only in secure settlements deep whitin my borders cause they are crap when defending against a real army.

What units are you guys recruiting for garrison purposes, specially with the romans?

[torf]

In Italia, I use a garrison of three roman units (1 Hastati, 1 Principes and 1 Leves) + some socii units that I can recruit in this settlement. In case of need, I use neighbouring settlements garrisons to fight against rebels. Also I have a pretorian army in Italia in which I put my young FM for their military service. Outside of Italia, I put a praetorian army in the provinces with Province government. For the settlement with local government, I use local and mercenary units. If the settlement is in a zone of conflict, I also try to keep a consular army here.

[Shoebopp]

You could try giving all pre-Marian Roman units (Velites, Hastati, Principes, Triarii, and even Equites) the free_upkeep_unit EDU attribute. This would make your question of which unit to garrison your cities with much easier - you use all of them! In addition, this would reflect the fact that before the Marian reforms, all Roman troops were not professionals but rather part-time soldiers, full-time farmers. When not campaigning, they are not being paid military wages and instead contribute to the economy through farming. When campaigning, they are away from their farms, and thus incur upkeep costs. You could even multiply the upkeep of those Roman troops by 1.5 to truly reflect how punishing it was to enlist Romans away from their farms. Maybe that would encourage you to get to the Marian reforms as quickly as possible