Vanamond3: One aspect of this game which is SERIOUSLY enraging me is arriving at a town and finding myself attacked by robbers. I have 50-80 men in my party, but I guess I keep giving them the night off or something? Because somehow, there I am, all by myself, against several robbers. It's idiotic.
Furthermore, it's getting worse. At first it was one, then two, then three, and just now I walked into a village and was swarmed by FIVE robbers. It's ridiculous. Is there a way to shut this off? Prevent it from happening?
This really pissed me off when I first started playing, but it actually gets easier as you get further into the game - though I speak only for the Viking Reforged Edition (haven't bothered with standard M&B:W since the Viking expansion adds so much). That said, for all I know the below could be true for stock M&B:W as well.
Firstly, combat skills make a significant difference once you get beyond 140 or so.
Secondly, better equipment helps a bit - especially better armor as the damage you take is significantly reduced.
Finally - and most importantly - your followers (the individual NPCs you can recruit, level up and equip) will actually fight by your side in these encounters, unlike the "regular" soldiers. Actually without these guys you'd have to be really really good or have crazy-high stats coupled with high-end armor to win these events.
What pisses me off even with tons of followers and decent skills are those crappy missions where you have to locate a bandit lair and raid it. For some retarded reason, you are limited to a maximum of about 6-7 troops with you, even though the number of enemies increase as your level goes higher. For some even more retarded reason not all enemies are actually on the map at the start, but instead they respawn in areas that you've previously cleared! Usually they respawn right behind you as you're heading towards another group!
Luckily there are mods to fix this (and also the "bandits attacking in town" thing). I'd recommend checking them out - e.g. for Viking Reforged edition the "VC Tweaks Tool" is worth looking into as it potentially fixes a bunch of things (and its easy to customise).