A strange question on defence

[Barronosod]

I'm not quite sure why this is happening. As Abysian, I have a provence w/ fort (castle), lab, temple, and defence of 50. I also have two armies commanded to defend the castle. However, whenever invaded, the battle only shows the 50 defence units and neither of the armies (as if not in the provence). Then all units are sieged inside the castle.

Any thoughts?

[Arryn]

Mobile armies in a castle province only join the PD to repel the initial attack if they were set on "Patrol" orders and not just "Defend". The latter order keeps them inside the walls, the former allows them to go outside.

[von_Schmidt]

Armies (ie: commanders) on 'defend' will be inside the castle.

Commanders on 'patrol' will be outside the castle, together with the provincial defence.

[Barronosod]

I foolishly had no idea. Thanks.

[tinkthank]

Well they answered your question, but may I add:
Abysia has some very good PD, as you have already noticed; but you may well find it not worth your while to invest in PD above 30 or so. Each additional humanbred you get for the PD will be costing you 31+. Of course, if your PD is at 35 and you get a nice Random Event which pushes it up by 15, that's nothing to cry about, but there are serious diminishing returns at high levels. Especially if the province you are defending has a castle (and especially if that castle has a lab: you've got Warlocks who can Gateway in with extra troops), you'll often get time to get there and defend it if you feel it is threatened; as long as one commander is there, maybe just doing some research, you can defend that castle well. Well maybe this is old news but just thought I'd mention it. (Surely other folk might disagree with this advice, but there you go.)