This game is nigh incomprehensible.

I can't find much information on this game (bizarrely), but here's my experience so far.

I started out with a tutorial where all the enemies had about 10 health each and I barely understand the concept of tying my shoelaces before I'm thrust out into the wide world.

I accept a quest (foolishly) and upon nearing my ultimate location I get jumped by some mounted bandits... and then the game displays its true nature at last. I get utterly annihilated like it's a joke- to a group of less than 10 enemies.

I'm not claiming to be an amazing gamer or some kind of strategic genius- but the generic mounted enemies are MONSTERS who will crush you without mercy, easily.

I save-scummed repeatedly (there are LOTS of these mounted enemies) and I decided that I need to get some NPCs to back me up. I hired about 10 peasants... and then the game sucker-punches me in the face again. For no reason that I can figure suddenly no villages will let me hire any more peasants.

I've gone into trade to build up a bit of money (since bandits keep stealing my money), but there doesn't seem to be much point. I keep getting jumped by bandits in towns and they snipe me despite the fact that I have trouble hitting something 5 feet in front of me. If I am so susceptible to being easily defeated by generic enemies then why in the world would I ever walk around without bodyguards?

EDIT: Why in the world is there a Ransom Broker in this game? Why has Prisoner Management doubled the number of prisoners you can haul around since Warband? There are barely any blunt weapons in this game and trying to knock guys out when they're shooting you up is a good way to die.
EDIT3: Forgot to mention! The few guys I did capture (Looters) sold for 12 each. -_-

EDIT2: The unit names are terrible! "Poor Cossack"? "Polish Mercenary Infantryman (recruit)"? (Nitpicking at this point)

===

Remember the Training Fields? The Arenas? The Tournaments? Remember how these are risk-free ways to experience combat and get better at it? With Fire & Sword has no such areas, good luck facing the ridiculously powerful mounted enemies with no units and no way to experience combat without lots of risk and loss.

I think I'll just go back to Warband.

Some tips: I played WFaS a lot, but it’s been a while.

Firearms:

Firearms change the battle dynamic drastically. I actually liked that, once I got used to it, but know lots of people didn’t. Firearms „level the playing field” – a peasant with a homemade rifle can kill you, if they land a shot, so even one, lowly ranged unit is a potential threat to you. You’ll have to depend to a MUCH larger extent on your troops and on having an advantage either in sheer numbers or in unit quality. This is much more a game of “You as army commander” than “you as a good fighter”. As you get better armour and become better at shooting, you will be able to participate more effectively in combat, but firearms remain rather deadly throughout the game.

Economy:

The best way to not lose money early on is to go to villages and buy whatever they produce, then sell that in the nearest town and immediately buy some town-made goods the peasants like (e.g. alcohol). Sell these in a village. Keep some of your money in coin and some in tradable items – these won’t be stolen if you have a bandit encounter in town. Also: do not travel into towns at night, unless forced to.

You can also deposit money in the bank in town (accessible via the “town center” menu) – it will be safe that way. Be warned, though, that the money can only be withdrawn in the city it was deposited in.

If you have a more substantial sum of cash, you can talk to the mayor of one of the main cities and send a trade caravan elsewhere. This is a good option for trading large amounts of goods, especially if you have other reasons to head to the destination town and can protect the caravan yourself (you don’t hire many guards for the caravan). This option requires a significant investment the first two times you use it, but it’s worth it in the long run.

There is one more particularly valuable trade opportunity: buying gunpowder in towns that produce it and selling it in the castles. For some reason, it’s insanely profitable.

Combat on the world map:

The best strategy I’ve fund for engagements with infantry with firearms is to equip a short sword and ride towards the enemy while changing directions very often. This makes it hard for them to hit you with a bullet and they’re almost defenceless while they’re reloading. I have occasionally wiped +20 riflemen that way. Melee infantry is best fought by kiting them around the battlefield and picking them off with your pistol.

If the enemy in mounted, winning without a sufficient number of troops to back you up is HIGHLY unlikely. Early on this might mean the best option is to pay mounted bandits off, instead of engaging them.

Troop recruitment:

The game has four different troop recruitment methods. This is more realistic than M&B: W – people don’t become units of a different type just because you paid some money for the transformation while camping in the middle of nowhere. It is, however, much more of a pain in the neck early on:

1. Villages will let you recruit the most basic units that are mostly cannon-fodder. The peasants can be upgraded to “specialise” in either melee or ranged weaponry. They can then become veteran units of that type. That’s their whole development. They are honestly rubbish and I don’t remember using them after I could afford anything else. Recruitment is possible once a week or so, if you have good relations with a village. Occasionally even when the option is available, no one may volunteer.

2. Next in quality are the troops you can recruit in taverns. As they gain experience, they won’t gain any new equipment. They can only be upgraded to veteran units of the same type. They’re your staple troops for that part of the game, when you don’t belong to a faction.

3. Next are mercenaries hired at four camps located in different regions of the map. You can hire infantry, cavalry or riflemen. You buy additional equipment (e.g. better armour, better weapons) for these troops in their camps. The troops can be “upgraded” only in terms of their experience level (they are hired as “recruits” and can then become “experienced” and later “veteran” troops of the same type). These can be your best troops for that part of the game, where you don’t belong to a faction, specifically because you can buy some pretty advanced gear, if you have the money.

4. When you join a faction, you get the option of ordering new recruits from the towns and fortresses controlled by that faction. These range from cannon-fodder peasants to elite bodyguard units. Recruitment will cost you money upfront and it will take some time before they’re ready. They’re provided in standardised “batches” of a few units at a time.

Prisoners:
If you want to make money out of trading prisoners, your best bet is to sell them in Kafa (in the Crimean peninsula). While it is harder to capture prisoners, it still happens and I suppose they were included because historically slave and prisoner trade was still a thing in that time period. Prisoners fetch a different price, depending on their quality. Looters are lowest tier cannon-fodder, so you get almost nothing. Once you engage in fighting with actual armies, the rewards per person will be much more interesting.

Yeah, I definitely got the "don't try to fight enemies by yourself" vibe (which makes getting ambushed while walking around by yourself in towns even more questionable). Good advice to not travel into towns at night, it's obvious on hindsight but I'm often so engaged in my business I don't even think of time-of-day properly. ... You can store money? O_O Interesting, I didn't even know you could set up your own caravans. I had no idea you could trade at castles... Wow, I'm really skittish about getting that close to enemy gunners, I've gotten blasted at long distances a few times. Yep, learned this one quick. I swear they sped up mounted troop capabilities in WF&S, those lances come down so fast. Yeah, I was so broken in by Warband & vanilla M&B that I was just flabbergasted when they hit max development so quick and I couldn't hire any more. Peasants are pretty worthless in WF&S. I always forget these units exist, my eyes just glaze over when I spot them in taverns. I did figure this one out before I stopped playing, probably the best way to handle things normally. Interesting, so it's highly advisable to join a faction. I'm still a little weirded by the whole process in WF&S vs. Warband, but they must sell for way more if there's any purpose in it.

===

Thanks for the response.

The thing I'm going to have to remember most is the first point you made:

This is a different beast than Warband, it's not as much about you as it is about your armies- you just can't do as much by yourself as you could in Warband.

It does lead to tense shootouts later on (when one bullet will wound you severely, but not necessarily kill you). That said, I think it’s just a hold-over from the base game. WFaS was NOT a very polished extension.

Bodyguards (party members) in such encounters got coded in by another team into Viking Conquest (which, again, is significantly different than either M&B:W or WFaS) Since it’s possible to add them, there might be a mod that does that for WFaS, but I never looked for one.

Regarding banking (you get interest on your deposits, by the way) and trade caravans – yep, these are features unique to WFaS. In general the different time period (Renaissance instead of feudalism) led to a more mercantile economy and some extra options of this sort. If I recall correctly, I made MOST of my money by trading (and not selling loot or prisoners), right up until I got a fief. I did that either when I absolutely had to (my character was the „last woman standing” on my side and I was doing a story mission to repel the Swedes from Czestochowa), or after having a bunch of points put by someone in the party into First Aid and having some troops to pull me off the battlefield. First Aid basically guarantees that your character can be patched up and redeployed. So I lead the first attack with the premise that the more enemies I wipe out personally, the better the battle balance for the rest of the party (and my character also draws shots from the gunners, which means they shoot less at my advancing army). If I do get shot, we go into phase two: I redeploy my character (because I usually take skill points in surgery and the characters’ presence means lower deadly losses on my side), then go hide in a remote corner of the map while the armies duke it out. And I – the human, not the pixel alter ego - just go wash some dishes, hang or fold the laundry or somesuch. It's an odd play-style, but it works well for me. The variable prices were, arguably, a fix of a Warband oversight (if you read what the brokers say, they claim to asses each prisoner based on their wealth and the opportunity for getting a big ransom – but in W&B:W they then buy everyone equally, for the same price). AFAIR, at the top the prices go into the 130 per person range. Also revamped prisoner management means you don’t have to spend too many skill points to keep a larger number of prisoners. You can engage in a few different battles then go back and sell the whole lot all at once.

Overall, however, it’s not a big economic game changer. I see it mostly as a historically justified holdover from the base game. The Muslim empires of that period did engage in slave trade and the game is set in a region that has a Muslim faction (hence the slave market in Kafa), so you get slave trading options. AFAIR the Crimeans also have the faction units that consistently get blunt weapons, precisely so they can take slaves. Everyone else cares mostly about killing.

Later on in the game, when you have engagements with many units, you can decide – for example – to equip one of the rare blunt weapons and go hunt down some of the enemies that are being routed; they've a lot easier to take down wit their back to you, running away in panic. A small percentage of people will also be knocked unconscious by charging horses. And - if I remember it right - armoured units have a chance to be knocked out by an otherwise lethal attack, which leads to them surviving (and being taken prisoner) more often than the scrubs.

Yeah, I tried going into WF&S with 100% incoming damage (as opposed to default 1/4) and I quickly changed my mind after an ambush. Seriously getting the impression WF&S is a trading game at this point :D I do that a bit in Warband, depending on the enemy forces. Good tactic, lol. That's pretty clever; surgery is probably one of the best skills to get as the player character. I do get the feeling it was an attempt at a rebalance of Warband's system where the slave trade is hands-down the best way to make money- selling Sea Raiders at over 100 denars per with a load of 40-50 each time nets you some insane cash pretty easily.

Not sure if I misread your statement, but in Warband only the one named slave trader buys every prisoner at a fixed price, every other one buys them at varying prices depending on unit type.

Yeah, definitely agreeing the feature is mostly just a holdover from the base game.

=== This is probably why the game felt so off to me.

When a single caravan full of velvet from Kyzykermen to Vyborg can net you as much as 120k+ thalers?

Wowzers. That's significantly more than I've ever gotten in any M&B game, lol.