Province Defence?

[Sombre]

PD is, as far as I am concerned, the most powerful tool you can have against the AI. And yes, it works against impossible AI just fine.

You see the AI isn't too bright at waiting to build up forces before it attacks. So if you build up PD in the border provinces (along with your offensive army) a lot of the time the AI will just throw handfuls of troops at them, which is a total waste because PD doesn't take losses unless it loses entirely. I have defeated much much more powerful AI empires by maintaining a border, pumping up PD and moving forward one province at a time then pumping PD into that too. If you lose a province it's never a big problem because then the AI runs straight into the PD you built before. I made a thread about this lemming problem the AI has before.

But doesn't this take a lot of gold? Well no, not really, not with order 3 it doesn't. I regularly drop 30 points into PD - sometimes 40 if it's an obvious checkpoint and I don't want to move forward. Of course the PD for some nations is cack and really isn't worth using but these cases aren't that common.

As for MP - well there you have to put much more thought into it.