Useless army

[Schnitzelmann]

First: I have an appreciation of 87%, but rebels attack every year.

They most often come with 4 squads and easily wipe my army (4 infantry+2 tank squads) because my troops do not care when I order "Retreat", one at least is always attacking and gets destroyed. Then in an even battle (numerous), my people just run around and wait until they get shot.
Total bs

[Arpente Reves]

Appreciation don't matter with rebels I think.
Also do you have any guard towers? And is your army well paid?

[Starfoth The Burgundy Silk Rug]

As we speak, my army is running off to some random remote farm in a small town on the other side of the map as rebels gun then down as they run past because it's being "targeted" by the rebels. Pretty sure about 10-20 of my soldiers are dead and the massive chunk of rebels has taken no damage,
Retreat isn't working for me.

[Deuce]

Yea.. the way they implemented military control into the game isn't very realistic.

But it can be made to work. Just gotta play the game they way it works, not the way it works in real life. To do that, you have to assume that as the rebels often start grouped together, that it's possible your forces won't be grouped together when they eventually meet. In effect, you just need enough troops to cope.

Also group several defence towers together tightly, in each key part of the map (obviously around the palace, but also anywhere else that seems to be a frequent target).

I normally end up with something like:
2 barracks
2 tank bases
1 military hq
1 fort
10-20 defence towers with machine gun upgrade
All troops upgraded when possible and military drills edict always on.

With the above, I never lose a battle unless the game gets very lucky by managing to trigger an invasion combined with a rebellion. Even then i'm normally ok though.