Defending Provinces.

How do you guys defend provinces when your capital is in the middle of a bunch of terrotories, and there are no choke points. Mainly early game.
For example:
M=My Province
C=My Capital
T=Enemy Territory.
TTTTTTTT
TTTMTTTT
TMMMTMT
TMCMMMT
TMMMTTTT
TTTTTTTTT
I find I can not put enough men in each province to defend it, because the enemy can strike anywhere,while I have to defend them all. And I do not have enough cash for a good amount of PD per province.

[Yvelina]

You simply cannot defend them. Province defense is useless against anything of consequence, and unless you are expecting attacks from scouts and assassins, anything above 1 point is a waste. You have to establish treaties and alliances, and convince your neighbors that they are better off attacking someone else. Later in the game, you can build castles, use teleport mages to kill off aggressors, but early game, diplomacy is your only option.

If you are talking about SP, there is nothing you can do. You will be attacked. The less your income and the higher the PD (1, 11, 21), the less chance a particular province will be attacked, but ultimately, all AIs will fight you.

[The Panther]

In SP, if you put 10 PD everywhere, the AI will be afraid to attack, for they can see your PD value in every province and grossly overrate it. If you put 20 everywhere, they will leave you alone. This is a cheesy way to beat the AI easily by attacking them on your own terms.

But don't even remotely think of trying that in MP, as it is a total waste of gold. The uses for PD are:

1 PD - use everywhere so you can see your opponents troops if they attack.
3 PD - stops the black hawks for most races.
5 PD - can also stop the wolves.
10 PD - can catch scouts and spies and will stop many more of the annoying spells like arouse hunger.

You can even put up a big bunch of PD in a single province if you believe an enemy will attack there and you need some fodder for your own army to meet them in battle. It is a quick and cheap way to get a bunch of wimpy troops instantly for a key battle.

As for your capitol, that free 25 PD will help you a lot if you can somehow catch an enemy trying to seige it and move in your own army or patrol on the same turn.

But PD does need to be fixed somehow to make it far more useful. Like adding a mage for each 5 PD. Or maybe something else too.

[Cainehill]

And some nations have decent enough PD that it's worthwhile to buy - Jotunheim and Ulm for instance. With them, buying up 15 or 20 PD just as someone is getting ready to attack can be a significant force multiplier, especially since the PD winds up taking lots of casualties instead of your troops. As long as you win, the PD regenerates, which can make it fairly hard to take the province, if there's also a significant non-PD force there (especially mages).

[Endoperez]

Against AI, using 11 and 21 is better than using 10 and 20. I can't say anything about MP, as I never tried it.