Minimum Garrison Size to Ensure Peace and Tranquility

[Clovis Sangrail]

How big a garrison do I need in a castle or town to ensure that enemy armies leave my fief alone when I am absent from the premises.

As I recall in Warband, if you had a garrison of around 200 or so (exact number eludes me), even if they were low tier troops, enemy lords tended to go elsewhere for their marauding.

Does this hold true in Bannerlord?

[Move2Bastyon]

Doesn't seem to matter, 200 might put off smaller parties, but once an Army forms, they will go after anything, even if they take heavy losses themselves in the process

[Zoid]

Any garrison that had the slightest chance of surviving a siege would immediately starve/desate because the castle/city could not feed them.

[titanopteryx]

The mechanic with settlement food makes big garrisons not sustainable. Garrisons drain the town / castle food stat very quickly if the garrison starts getting to big. The problem is the town gets food from arriving villagers, and as time goes the bandit population starts growing to very large numbers so the villagers have trouble getting the food to town. Castles are just in a bad spot food-wise. They don't have a market so their food creation gets quickly overcome by the castle's prosperity. At a certain point any soldiers you put in a castle garrison will just starve and die. In my opinion it's best to rely on a militia for a castle, and even better to not have a castle in the first place and just go for towns. By voting against yourself for castles. Lords with less or no fiefs get higher priority for new fiefs, so having castles will hurt your chance to get a town.

[Sentient_Toaster]

High. I've seen sieges where garrison + militia >= 300, but the attackers brought over 700. Individual armies can be > 1000.

[Ser Calenhad]

Better to give yourself more time to learn and grow, before acting like you're the biggest kahuna around? Count me in. ^^