how do I prevent these units constantly cycling through provinces when on shore defense order?

[leastfire]

very annoying, they constantly cycle through provinces for no reason, loosing entrenchment and letting enemy land? if I remove area defense order, general will have limit of 24 divisions instead of 72. and if I don't, well loosing 78% entrenchment most often means loosing tile. and they often do strategic redeployment too even on rigid cohesion so not only they loose entrenchment but also almost all organization

 

[vermicious knid]

Use the garrison order to save time positioning the units and then turn it off. The game will stop shuffling your defending units trying to fill gaps. Same applies to placing garrisons on a bunch of islands...you don't want a constant sea transport shuffle.


It isn't intuitive, but that is the best solution I've found.

 

[General Tao]

Use the garrison order to set up, then cancel it and create a new garrison order on a neutral country you don't have military access to (and is unlikely to be part of a conflict, like Switzerland or Bhutan). You'll keep the the 72/90 div limit but the divisions won't move or respond to anything.

People also use this as part of the planning bonus exploit to give the benefits of the bonus without interacting with the battle planner too closely.