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Neither of the methods discussed are 100% satisfactory, falling back to a friendly city is timewasting though plausible, magic soldiers are convenient but not so realistic. My thoughts are that tweaking the Empire system is the best way to go since I don't want to revert back to a map filled with 2 or 3 unit armies crisscrossing the map on their way to retrain or reinforce. It's perfectly plausible for reinforcements to reach an army in situ, by the 18th century army management was getting sophisticated enough to organise this and taking a year or so to do it seems reasonable. So I'd amend it so that:

1) You can always reinforce if the army is parked in a friendly city or town - you can assume the army itself is capable of pressing/recruiting more men and training them up whatever the recruiting ability of the city itself. A recently conquered city wouldn't count as friendly until resentment of foreign occupation had died down.

2) To reinforce an army in the field that army needs to in range (say 2 turns worth of infantry movement) of a friendly city which has some basic military recruiting capability, i.e. it may not be able to recruit grenadiers but it can recruit and equip line infantry who'll be sent off to the army who in turn will train them up for specialist roles. N.B. If the army is overseas then modify this so that colonial units can reinforce as above but regular army units need a route via a nearby port (not necessarily a friendly port, one seized from the enemy would do) and then through an open trade route back to the homeland to get reinforcements - this would give blockades and trade route interdiction some teeth. The player would of course be warned when an army is out of contact.

And for a more hardcore tweak:

3) Assume that apart from their zone of interdiction armies also enforce a larger zone in which they maintain patrols capable of interdicting the movement of small enemy units like these invisible reinforcements. So if you park an army deep in enemy territory and the enemy mask it off from friendly territory with their own armies then you won't be able to get reinforcements to it. Manoeuvring to force an enemy to retreat was a big component of 18th century warfare. And for further hardcore tweak bring in some basic logistics, i.e. an army that was in a position where it couldn't reinforce would start to lose men even if it wasn't being attacked and if parked in inimicable terrain (snow/desert/jungle) that rate loss would be increased.

I wouldn't want to bog the game down with too much logistical baggage but I think something on these lines could increase the challenge of the game without making it overly complex. For instance dumping an army on an enemy coast will still be fine but unless the army or its supporting fleet takes control of a port as well then it will find itself in trouble a after a couple of turns. Which would seem quite realistic.