No Garrisons
Garrisons are inconsistent – They’re often large as an army, can contain high-tier units unrelated to a city’s recruitment ability, and are completely free. Dynamic Garrisons 2 aims to fix that but still offers unrecruitable units as garrisons, and military buildings wouldn’t necessarily hold entire units, just the instructors.
Thus, removed all garrison units
Special settlements and defense buildings gain 1 low tier unit for each building tier as simple guards/militia with intelligence bonuses as well as defense, providing enemy agent protection and line of sight bonus for each tier.
Garrisoned armies get 50% agent protection regardless.
This adds a new strategic layer to the game by making cities not automatically defensible, leading to a completely different campaign experience:
– Dedicated armies for defense at cities/borders/chokepoints are essential. Combine with Militia Recruitment for additional recruitment options, No Extra Upkeep to remove additional overall upkeep from lords and Dynamic Economy for reduced upkeep and removed recruitment costs of lords.
– Reduces siege battles as once a faction’s main army is defeated, undefended cities can be taken without an additional fight.
– Small Armies are a major potential threat, so sending small raiding parties that can sack/occupy/destroy is a viable strategy as is it now worth it since you don’t need a full army necessarily that costs more than the sacking value.
– Rebellions are much more dangerous as they can instantly capture the city if it’s left unguarded, maintaining public order is crucial.
– Expansion is more dynamic as you can gain and lose settlements quicker.
– Economy is harder to manage, forcing more thoughtful planning.
– Scouting for Intelligence of enemy forces is much more important.
– Flanking maneuvers are more challenging with potentially more armies on the map, naturally implementing a ‘sally out’ option.
– Border alliances are more important to reduce defense requirements.
– Higher-tier units feel more unique and impactful.
To balance and make few units able to hold against armies, 5x HP to all towers and gates with more arcs and dynamic range, climbing ladders speed is halved and causes more fatigue, and 2x siege towers labor force requirement as these things are quite massive and hard to build. Combine with Deadly Attack Dynamics so only battering rams and artillery can destroy gates.
To make the line of sight bonus impactful, lowered the base line of sight as Line of Sight Reduced
The garrison removal for the AI takes effect after one turn, and it seems to handle the new situation well – having small defensive armies in and around most settlements.
Supports various mods.
Feedback is very much welcome.
