Help needed with raid management

[Shizai]

I currently have 4 villagers, about to get a fifth. I have reinforced clubs and wood shields for everyone, plus one bow and a shortsword for me (forgot the name, the 28dmg one).

I had 2 raids now, and I am having a bit of a hard time managing this. I hope you guys can give me some tips.

1) First raid I has everyone working when the raid started. Since villagers were equipped with weapons, they instantly attacked the attackers. But since they had been working, they were spreaded around my camp, and went 3v1 and just directly died. I could not even get to them fast enough to help. Fortunately I was able to defeat the attackers.
One of the dead villagers had my bow, which became unavailable for me until they woke up again.

2) second raid I set 1 guy to patrol and gave him the bow, while having the remaining 3 villagers equipped and following me by the beginning of the day of the raid, to be prepared.
So I walked in circles for half of the day waiting for the raid. When they finally came, my followers didnt want to rush in, although still following me. Since I attacked first, I got pretty much of a beating right away, and quickly tried to retreat, when my followers finally joined and attacked the raiders.
Since raiders didnt stop attacking me, I was slowly backing up with raised shield until my companions finally beat them.

So all in all it seems really cumbersome to manage villagera during a raid. You have to carefully babysit them, otherwise they just die.
You also cant easily fend of the attackers yourself, since once its 2v1 or more, it quickly gets overwhelming since you get interrupted all the time and can barely get a swing out witout taking damage.

Raids will pretty much happen all the time, since threat increases by itself, and you need straps from killing roaming bandits which further pushes the raid threat level. So this will be a constantly happening event which mist be dealt with.
So you have any tips for combat during raids?

[Decado]

Yeah they can be nasty early. I lost my first two then beat the third. Have so far beat the rest. You should see how much stuff they stole in the first raids though!

What I do is when I know it’s coming I make my guys companions and command them to hold position in a line. I take them to where the raid is coming from and wait.

I have them hold position and let the bandits engage them and they typically spread out a bit so my guys have an advantage.

I will also flank the bandits as soon as they hit my guys and start smashing them in the back.

I still often lose a couple (have five atm) but this works far better than having guards mobilise. I think that’s mostly a last resort unless you have a purpose equipped beast on duty as like you say, if they’re split up they’ll get quickly double teamed

[Miedein]

You got melee companions, and ranged companions. Ones with higher agility and archery skill, give bow, and the melee ones, give them sword and board or a big 2hander if they're decent in that skill. Hit O to create a party. Then create a second party!

First party for me are my melee guys. As soon as the alert sounds that the raiders are approaching. I look what direction they are coming in. And line my melee guys in their path. Archer group is group 2. You can quickly switch between group commands with scroll wheel. I make sure archers have clear line of fire to the bandits so they can get a couple clear shots off, then send melee in to engage, while sending archers off to another side to try and get some side and rear shots in. I'm on threat level 10 now, so far I've not had a single person go down. And the enemies are starting to come with better armor and equipment now.

If you playing coop like I am. Usually my friends are playing archers while I'm a berserker going in with a 2h. I command the melee squad, and they move the archers around to get the flanks. If solo, can still be done and mastered with a bit of practice for positioning before getting yourself stuck into the fight.

Happy Rebellion!

[Shizai]

... and now I just got raided at a stockpile 200m from my camp, and the raid was over before I was even able to get there. Great!

[ralfgray66]

Clear out the bandit camps closet to your settlements. I usually do this right after I have counter a raid, considering I have all my workers together at that point. All raids come from camps, the further away the camps the more time you have to set up for their raids. Also, make sure all your worker have the food/health bar as high as possible. You may have to manually give them food to make sure all 3 slots are filled.