Newbie Micromanagement Question

[LintMan]

It sounds like you were building lots of independent troops (independent troops are not nation specific - any nation can build them, unlike your national troops, which can only be built at a castle).

A much better method is to build castles wherever you'll need troops, and concentrate on building troops almost entirely at the castles. Castles have the benefit that they transfer some of the resources from the surrounding provinces to the castle's province, so that it will have more resources to use to build troops there than any non-castle provinces do. So with castles your troops are more concentrated in certain spots (thus less shuttling them around), and you have more resources to work with (to build more troops there). Plus, castles increase your income, provide some defense, and increase supply to nearby provinces. And often, your race's troops are better than the independent ones that are available, so it's usually not a bad idea to build more of them than independents.