Re: Raising troops in provs w/o forts?
 

You could always have small armies of heavy cavalry or heavy infantry. When you let ANY type of army past your army, you're screwed since you've got to chase him all over the place.

Re: Raising troops in provs w/o forts?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No, smart AIs win without cheating. After all, if the AI loses to the human player, it's still inferior. Making the other player's life as miserable as possible, as long as there's a point to it, is a smart thing: If the enemy attacks you, it is in your best interests to hurt him as much as possible and make him regret coming here. If an enemy were to invade your country, you wouldn't "put up a fair fight that made them feel proud of themselves"...you'd hide in the woods and pick them off one by one in a guerrilla campaign, something that will be incredibly aggravating and make them regret ever attacking you. That's what a smart AI should do.

Re: Raising troops in provs w/o forts?
 

Depends on level of magic available, too.

Later on, spells like Imprint Souls and Angelic Host can create forces arbitrarily deep into enemy territory. Spells like Faery Trod allow a certain degree of movement to existing armies, and there's always the fun Flying Ship. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Also, later on having a single main army is just asking for being bLasted with flames, leprosy, frost (although Mechanical Men are immune to all three...) or a massive wave of longdead cavalry led by wraith lords.