I'm having a problem with all starting officers wasting themselves in early game garrisons. I've got plenty of privates, but they simply just won't go to the garrisons. And the starting area isen't large enough to trick the officers with the road cutting strategy. It would work if I had only one or two officers, as they would then be on the road when the next call to send a soldier to the garrison comes.

Can I do something with the military settings? Or anything else? Just to keep my officers inside the main building until I'm close enough to the enemy that I will need them. It takes a lot of time and recourses to keep razing my military buildings just because too valuable soldiers decides to move in when they are clearly not needed there.

Hi Emil_Eng,

Which version are you playing? If it is the 10th Anniversary:

The first thing that comes to mind is going to your HQ tab and putting the desired officers in reserve for defending said HQ. Simply increase the number of officers that you would like to hold back by pressing the + buttons there.

Mind you, you can only allow a maximum (at least I thought) of 15 soldiers per rank to defend. But this might solve part of the problem you are facing.

There is a workaround however and that is expanding your territory in the opposite direction you desire at the beginning of the game. Once expanded with two barracks (at least some distance away from the HQ), build a Storehouse and sent all of your officers there.

Then start building barracks in the direction you would like to explore and once completed, the soldiers that are stored closest will man them. This will be the regular soldiers which you still have in your HQ.

However, I can't come up with any map from the campaign where you start out with officers? As far as I can recall you only have regular soldiers which you have to train first.
Or are you playing custom maps?