Province defence

What province defence costs, what it does for unrest and stealth searches, how population caps it, and how it fares in forts, battle and conquest.

verified 6.37updated 2026-10-02 · Jake9 min read

Province defence, written PD, is a garrison that a province raises by itself once you pay for it. You do not move it, order it or keep it on the payroll. It stands in the province, fights when an enemy arrives and is back at full strength afterwards. This page covers what it costs, what each level gives, what limits it, and how it behaves in a siege and when a province changes hands.

For the armies you do control, see Army management. For the patrol and defend orders and for stealthy movement, see Map movement. For the population, unrest and supply figures that PD depends on, see Province attributes.

Every figure here is one the manual states. We have not re-measured them. The last section lists what the manual leaves out.

Buying province defence

You raise PD from the Defense line of the province screen (shortcut d), and the Nation Overview screen (F1) lets you buy it for any province from one place. The first level costs nothing. Every level after that costs as many gold as the level you are buying: level 2 costs 2, level 3 costs 3, level 11 costs 11, and so on.

Because each level has to be bought in turn, the price of reaching a level is the sum of every level up to it. The manual’s own example is level 10, which comes to 2 + 3 + … + 10 = 54 gold. Applying the same rule, level 20 comes to 209 gold. That second figure is our arithmetic from the manual’s rule, not a number it prints.

Three more rules about the purchase:

• The ceiling is level 100.
• PD has no upkeep.
• You cannot lower it by choice. Once a level is bought, the down arrow does nothing.

What the levels give

The manual describes the content of PD in broad strokes only.

• Level 1 brings one commander and a handful of troops.
• From there, every extra level brings more troops, and the screen lists them while you adjust the number.
• Reaching level 20 unlocks additional commander and troop types.

The manual does not list which units a nation’s PD contains or how many arrive at each level. Those depend on the nation. If you want to know what your own nation raises, raise the level on the province screen and read the list it shows.

The manual names three thresholds in all: levels 10, 15 and 20 each bring an extra benefit. The next section covers the first two. Level 20 is the one that adds unit types.

Unrest, searching and population

Unrest

Every 10 points of PD remove 1 point of unrest from the province each turn. The manual’s example is 53 PD, which gives a recurring reduction of 5 per turn. Unrest cuts a province’s income and resources, and once it reaches 100 the province stops allowing new recruits, so steady PD is a quiet way of keeping a province productive. The manual lists province defence next to patrolling, order scales and magic sites as the ways to bring unrest down.

Finding stealthy units

From level 15 upward, PD searches for hidden enemy units in its province by itself, every turn. An army, by contrast, has to be given the patrol order. Each point above 14 counts as one point of patrolling strength, and the manual’s example is that PD 25 has a patrol strength of 11. It describes this as about what the same number of patrolling infantry would give.

PD also feeds the general search formula. The search sums the patrol strength of every patrolling unit, subtracts half the province’s unrest (counting unrest as no more than 100), and adds PD minus 14 when PD is at least 15. The searchers then roll 2d25 (open-ended) on top of that total, and the hiding side rolls 2d25 (open-ended) on top of its stealth strength. The stealthy units are found if the searchers come out higher. So unrest works against the search, and PD works for it.

The manual says PD is a weaker searcher than a real army. It also says that when patrollers eliminate unrest, the province loses 10 population for each point removed. It attaches no such cost to PD’s own unrest reduction.

Population

A province can only keep the PD its people can support: 10 population for every point of PD. If the population falls below that, PD is cut to match. The check happens late in the turn, in the step the manual calls Reduce PD. This is the only way PD goes down by itself, apart from the losses below.

A province with 450 people, for example, can hold 45 PD at most. This is our arithmetic from the manual’s ratio.

One exception is stated: certain undead nations, such as Ermor, can have PD with no population behind it. Without a fort they have 1 PD, which is usually a single undead commander. With a fort they can reach 100 PD, made up of undead soldiers.

PD in a fight

PD is not part of the army you command, and it does not count as one of your squads. The manual gives these rules for how it behaves.

• It is restored after a battle, as long as the owner still holds the province. PD that fought and lost units this turn is back at full strength next turn.
• When a patrol discovers an enemy, the whole defending force in the province engages it. The manual does not say in so many words that PD is part of that force, but it describes province defence as a way of defending a province without stationing an army.
• When the army routs, units from PD count for only a quarter of their hit points towards the army’s total, because they are expected to run. A defending army that includes a lot of PD therefore reaches the rout threshold of 75 percent casualties more slowly than its raw numbers suggest. See Morale and rout.

Some spells add to PD while they last. Mechanical Militia, a global enchantment, adds a Mechanical Man at PD 1 and above and an Iron Fly at PD 20 and above. Fata Morgana, another global enchantment, adds two Warrior Illusions and an Archer Illusion at PD 1 and above and a Knight Illusion at PD 20 and above. Guardians of the Deep sends sea monsters to help underwater provinces. All three need a small local defence to be present before they have any effect, so a province with no PD gets nothing from them.

PD and forts

A fortress holds its own defenders, separate from PD: the castle guards, who start behind the gate, and the wall defenders, who stand on the walls. How many of each there are depends on the fort level, and the manual passages we used do not give the numbers. The manual compares them with PD by saying they are replenished before each fight, just as province defence is.

In a siege both groups help the defenders repair damage. The wall defenders have extra perks: unlimited ammunition and 20 percent more missile range. Only stair-borne attackers, fliers, ethereal units and missiles can reach them. Their cover counts as a tower shield with protection 30, and each one uses whichever is better, wall or own shield.

Two other fort rules touch PD indirectly. Units on the Defend order inside a fort do not fight an enemy who enters the province, but are besieged instead, whereas units on the Patrol order fight outside. And an unassigned garrison inside a fort stays behind the walls instead of joining the units outside.

The manual does not state whether PD fights outside the walls or behind them.

Losing PD

PD can go down in only three ways.

1. Capture. When a province is captured, all its PD is wiped out.
2. Relinquishing. In disciple games, giving up a province cuts its PD by 25 percent.
3. Too little population. The Reduce PD step cuts it to what the population supports.

A fourth rule works the other way. In the Conscription step, near the end of the turn, PD is raised to at least 1, and dominion and commander effects that add PD take effect there. The manual does not describe what those effects are or how much they add, and it does not say whose units fill the one PD point of a province that has just been captured.

PD, independents and scouting

The manual does not describe PD for independent provinces. What it does give is a game setting for independent strength, which it says can slow expansion by making adjacent provinces harder to take. See independents. Whether an independent province’s defenders follow the PD rules above is a question the manual leaves open.

An enemy’s PD level is not shown for free. A spy in the province, or scrying it, reveals it, while a simple scout does not. Owning the province reveals everything about it.

What the manual leaves open

• The units that each nation raises at each PD level, and how many.
• Whether a nation’s capital has a starting PD level of its own, and what that is. The passages we used do not give one.
• Whether PD fights outside a fort or inside it when the province is attacked, and whether wall defenders and PD are the same units or separate ones.
• How many castle guards and wall defenders each fort level has.
• What the dominion and commander effects that raise PD are, and how much they raise it.
• Whether a captured province’s minimum PD point belongs to the new owner.
• Whether PD in an independent province follows the rules on this page.