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[Ulfarr]

Fucking Holy Nation

I once started a run as a HN citizen because I like their area which meant that I started with a slight boost in my relations with them + whatever goodwill I got from helping them in battles against bandits and such.  Fast forward some months and everyone in my group is either of a "sinful" race or has prosthetics or is a woman or all of the above, so there I was with +15 relation with HN and an attack on sight warrant on my head. Fuck.

And then I decided to build a base north of Squin, where the game recognizes the land as Border Zone. Thing is HN thinks this area is theirs so they are all like "prayer day,motherfucker"!

[nenjin]

Prayer Day is pretty easy to manage though.

[Ulfarr]

Yes it is, but since they would attack my party on sight it was only a matter of time before they would start sending combat detachements instead of a priest and his merry band of club wielding altar boys 

[nenjin]

I had plenty of women and non-humans, it never seemed to provoke them to violence. I always just made sure the person carrying the book that would go speak to them was male and human. Maybe I'm missing something there.

[scriver]

Iirc the Holy Nation sends envoys to all of the Border Zone, or at least a large part of it.

[Ulfarr]

Probably the one thing the HN wouldn't miss, prosthetic limbs 

Some of my party members, including my only two male humans had lost a couple of limbs. Now if it was just their hands I would just remove them and be done with it, but they had lost their legs too. Peace was never an option.

In another run, the HN had given me trouble even when I had a male human with their book. So there we were, traveling through their lands peddling hash from the swamp to the UC minding our own business, keeping a low profile and taking care that we avoid any of their major settlements, the dammed book always on hand and almost all of our encounters with their patrols had gone smoothly. I say almost because one of their priest wasn't very happy about my way of teaching the faith to my two shek bodyguards and demanded that I hand my "beasts" over to the mines.

The Border Zone is considered a contested territory from both the HN and the Shek Kingdom so they both send their respective parties if you settle there.

[EuchreJack]

Gotten to a point in the backlog where Kenshi appears. What is this game like? Mount and Blade meets Rimworld? What's the best starting tip for playing something like "fortress mode"?

I should also point out that there is a start "The Freedom Seekers" that will give you the materials to start up a base.  The "Old Guard" character has a bounty from the Holy Nation, so either turn him in for the bounty or don't settle in Holy Nation territory.  You might have to start a couple times: Sometimes the game spawns The Freedom Seekers near an abandoned Waystation instead of an active one, and then the bandits will probably get you.

Oh, as for tips, I guess the best one is: Hire Mercenaries. 
I wish someone had told me about them a lot sooner.  Mercenaries are great, they cost 2000 cats, yet when they fight a bandit squad and win, the gear from the dead bandits usually sells for more, so you actually make money off them.  And they let you win against groups that would otherwise destroy your squad, while still allowing your people to get valuable experience.  And they can be hired for Base Defense, so when you see something nasty approaching your base, you can have one character run for the nearest Waystation/Town, hire Mercs, then run back and take all their stuff instead of having them destroy your squad.

Secondary tip: Your character are supposed to get beaten up.  Its part of the game.  Buy lots of medical supplies.  The above Mercs will heal your squad if under contract and after wiping out the bandits, but it might not be soon enough for everyone.  It can be useful in every battle to set one character as Passive and Stealth, then have them heal up everyone else while the Mercs fight the bandits.

[Soadreqm]

Yes it is, but since they would attack my party on sight it was only a matter of time before they would start sending combat detachements instead of a priest and his merry band of club wielding altar boys 

Just hide the cyborgs when the priest is visiting. It's okay to have women, sheks and bugmen around, as long as you have a human male speak to the Holy Nation troops, and they can't see anyone with robolimbs. It's only once a week.
By the way, if you ever need to cross HN territory with a skeleton, the paladins don't bother you if it's being carried. Party members you're carrying are treated the same way as enemies you're carrying, i.e. not acknowledged at all.

[scriver]

"Just taking this heretic to the scrap heap, yessir, totally gonna melt this demon"

[Ulfarr]

Toppers! Good quality toppers, now with extra historical accuracy! Get yours today!

I found this video showing a weapon that looks quite similar to a kenshi topper. Now the example shown in the video is supposed to be a reproduction from a weapon shown in the maciejowski bible but after looking at the illustrations myself, the closest depiction I could find was one (called faussart according to wikipedia) that has a significantly more acute point...so yeah historical accuracy is debatable in this case... Still I think it is a nice looking weapon.

[Soadreqm]

That's clearly a combat cleaver.

[scriver]

It. Cleaves. Combat.

[Ulfarr]

Combat cleavers don't taper towards the hilt

/pedantics

Though yeah it should definitely hit like one

[nenjin]

Sometimes the bugginess/incompleteness of Kenshi gets on my nerves, but occasionally it does yield a somewhat entertaining upside.

Be me, with 4 scrubs setting up base east of Squinn. Concrete walls are done to the degree there's only one way in and one way out, foundation for my first real building had just gone up.

I'd sporadically noticed aggro on a character at base and saw a single starving bandit was wailing on a wall near the corner of the base. Repairing it seemed to easily outpace him, so I went about my business.

Then I notice another guy running over to that section to start repairing, which I find odd so I look. One starving bandit has become 16 at some point. They're breaking down the concrete walls (vanilla) pretty much like they're nothing.

I know the score, it's time for an obligatory ass kicking. I dismantle a section and let them in and they rip my guys apart.

And then do the obnoxious crap where they stand aimless in your base for...well, possibly forever.

I remember restarting or re-importing to get around this issue, but I decide to trust to fate and stick it out. Boy, did it deliver.

I collect my bedrolls and food since the AI doesn't know how to loot my food and they're oblivious to my presence now. I set up my bed rolls on the other side of my now defunct wall and rest up to regain some HP. I debate making another attempt at them in full but decide it's maybe best to move my supplies and shit back to Squinn in case this is a total bust.

That's when I get told Bandit Demands have arrived.

I try to screw around with getting the Dust Bandits to aggro the Aimless Starving Bandits, but after a couple attempts I realize it's better to just let the Dust Bandits kick the shit out of me and get it over with. I do and they fuck off, their mission of making me tougher complete.

I bandage everyone up again and rest a little bit, trying to figure out my next move when I see some text.

"Hey."

"Give us your money."

Great, I think, I've some how aggroed them through the wall. Then I see:

"Hey."

"Something something give US your money."

And that's when a full on bloodbath erupts in the doorway of my building foundation.

Apparently either during reload or by some quirk, fully half of the Dust Bandits were stuck up in the middle of the Starving Bandits. And after staring at each other for a few hours the inevitable happened and they drew down on each other. The Starving Bandits thrash the outnumbered Dust Bandits handily (these SBs are like 10/10 5/7/5. Waaayyy stronger than I remember from pre-release Kenshi!)

And while I'm watching all this from stealth on the wrong side of my own wall, ANOTHER group of Starving Bandits enters the fray from the wilderness. The DBs go down hard but not without dealing out damage to pretty much everyone. The other SBs leave as soon as the fight is over.

At this point my base looks like a slaughter house and I'm starting to doubt if I'm ever going to get control of it back, because the original SBs just go back to standing around, even after I dismantle the building that their AI gets obsessed about.

But there's tasty DB corpses to loot and I figure, why not see what I can get away with?

I start sneaking in and invariably start aggroing some of the 14 some odd SBs still remaining. I guess nuking the building did something to their AI because they're acting like their old selves again to a degree. I start managing to lure them by 1s and 2s around the corner of the wall where I deal out sweet, sweet justice. I have to reload my save more than a few times because Kenshi continues to just generate bandits out of nowhere and send them in to your flanks constantly. But after much tedium I finally kill off the last of them. At this point everyone's HP bars are completely fucked, after two back to back KOs and numerous smaller fights. But the base is clear....if covered in a fuck load of jam and fly swarms.

As I'm going through the corpses I happen to notice one wwaaaayyyy away from the main body of the fighting. And lo, it's the Dust Boss with a nice $3k bounty on his head. Who's laughing now dickheads?