Campaign Garrison Numbers???

[Bombax]

Hi,

I'm currently playing the Seleukos campaign, and having defeated Antigonus after a few campaign rounds I've found myself being asked to assign from 800 to 1,000 points worth of troops to garrison duties.
This is a huge chunk of my army.
I'm wondering if this sounds right, or if it's an error of some sort.
If it's correct, could someone in the know indicate whether garrison numbers/percentages are set explicitly in campaigns, or are they random? In other words, how does this side of the campaign module work?

Ta,
Bombax.

[rbodleyscott]

They are mainly a mechanism to offload part of the field army when the next battle in the historical campaign was smaller than the previous one. And of course this also fits the history, as often field armies got whittled down considerably owing to the need to leave garrisons to hold down conquered territory, or simply to defend the homeland while the field army was on campaign. Alexander left half of the Macedonian army behind when he set off to attack Persia, and he dropped off substantial contingents to hold down the parts he conquered when he moved on.

The only way to avoid it would be for each battle to be bigger (or at least no smaller) than the last. This is how the sandbox campaigns work, but historical campaigns didn't work like that. Taking the Seleukos campaign as an example, Seleukos made a massive effort to repel Antigonos at Babylon, even recruiting a horde of Kassite allies, and then everything had to go back to normal for the next campaign - he couldn't just keep all of his forces in one huge "doom stack".

Try not to think of it as an imposition, think of it as an opportunity to tailor the composition of your army for the next battle.

[GiveWarAchance]

I was wondering about this too and was using garrison duty to leave off troops I'd like to replace with others as suggested.

[Bombax]

They are mainly a mechanism to offload part of the field army when the next battle in the historical campaign was smaller than the previous one.

Ah, that makes sense. Cheers Richard.