Re: Province Defence?
 

PD of 10 or more helps catching stealthy units and armies (pg 67 of the manual). At PD, the nation gets another type of commander and starts getting defenders of another type (pg 97).

Re: Province Defence?
 

So you only pay for PD once?

There are no recurring costs? Does the cost of high PD reduce the tax income from the province?

Re: Province Defence?
 

Yes, yes, no.

And province defense will always get back to full strength at the end of turn unless an enemy has conquered the province.

Re: Province Defence?
 

Once it's paid for, there's absolutely no disadvantage from high PD... unless you want to give the province away or something.

Re: Province Defence?
 

Well, in theory an event could raise PD over the maximum, making it roll over and giving you a useless PD of -120 or so. It's probably been fixed, though.

Any way, PD is feasible even up to 40 or 60 range, but rarely all the way up to 100 or 125.

Re: Province Defence?
 

There have been times I wanted to lower it but only to give it away (as was said), or to allow an ally to travel thru my castled province without losing the province.

Or if I had a lab there and was dong the thing about having a mage doing the Wind Ride thing to snatch other nations commanders to me so that the other mages there could convert him. Having PD gets in the way of that trick since the PD can kill the guy before my mages get off more than one try

Re: Province Defence?
 

It also depends on what nation you are playing, the quality varies alot. Some nations, like Machaka for instance, have PD that's so weak it's not worth buying past one.

Re: Province Defence?
 

I always have a dilemma when it comes to buy some more PD or use the gold to buy some troops for my armies, especially for some nations that require lot of gold to maintain their troops or dominons scales that make money less easy to collect.

The value to give a PD can be a difficult choice for me, as i don't know what can be considered as "safe" enough while staying cheap enough to not prevent me to raise my armies, as it seems it can vary a lot with how good the enemy AI is going.

I remember on a game located on my favorite map "Silent Seas wraparound" , in which LA Ermor walked over one of my Rlyeh province despite i thought it would be safe with a PD of 40 (and it costed me a lot as my economy was very crippled). But the Ashen Empire walked over every provinces and all the 4 nations in that specific game anyways http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Province Defence?
 

Map sizes also make a difference. On a small map I would less likely to invest in PD because I can create a move an army anyplace fairly quickly. But on a larger map I would want provinces to defend themselves abit more.

Re: Province Defence?
 

It also might be helpful to not think of PD as merely a 'stand alone' defense - it can be very useful in assisting and adding bulk to to any regular units in the province. A PD of 10 can get you anywhere from 20-40 or so units, and are useful even if only for getting tangled up in the feet of your enemies, as long as you've got some 'real' troops there to take advantage. Just make sure you place your regular troops properly (being aware that the PD will appear in one big 'blob' in the center of the map).