Garrison

When you move troops into a walled city or fort they become part of the garrison. A garrison reduces the damage inflicted on a city or fort’s defences by besieging enemy units and increases the rate of catapult fire. Garrisons are also important when conquering foreign cities; without a sufficient garrison, any hostile non-native city will eventually revolt. The troop type has no effect on the strength of the garrison; only the troop numbers count. Thus, low cost spearmen are ideal for garrison duty.

When a city or fort is under siege, members of the garrison will slowly be killed by the attackers. Which unit killed is chosen at random. When a missile units like archers or scorpions attack a fortified target, they only damage the garrison and not the fortifications themselves.

Each fort and city has a garrison capacity, which is the maximum number of troops that will be effective in defence. Troop numbers greater than the garrison capacity have no additional effect on defence. When a city or fort is selected, the garrison size and capacity are visible in the information panel. All units inside a city, including those that are part of the garrison, consume less food than those in the field. This can be useful when staging troops before a campaign begins. However, if a building runs out of food, the garrison no longer has any effect on defence, catapult fire, or in preventing rebellions.