Beginner? Confused? Dying by Goats? (Incomplete)

Then this is where you can look to help you, minus the last part!

I. What is Kenshi?

Kenshi is a strategy RTS built around multiple mechanics. The sole purpose is to "Survive", however, this can include everything from building massive bases to being a naked monk who can just knock out someone for their supplies. Endless possibilities, Really.
The game, as you can imagine, is EA, but the dev team extremely cooperative and hears you out on Reddit forums. Have an idea? Put it on there! They take your word to the bone! Very community-driven!
I'll provide some basics, but I think you should look at the lore yourself. Go out there and explore on your own!

II. What Can/should I Play As?

In this game, you can choose a main race, sub-race, etc. There are only 3 main ones you can play, but there are multiple NPC races out there. Don't try to catch them all. It just makes you look weird.
1. Humans - Pretty much how they are irl! Racist, amazingly stupid, and capable of drinking themselves back from the dead! Try it at home!
(a.) Greenlanders (Caucasian, Asian, Hispanic, "Improvised random characters") - Good for farming, cooking, and studying the vast mess of sciences. No set-backs besides not much buffs.
(b.) Scorch-Landers (African Descent but with red eyes, anime fans most likely) - Good for stealing things and the likes. Assasinations are your go-to, but don't expect to pick up a math book for any other reasons besides a stool to stand on
2. Skeletons - Star Wars Clone Wars reference. Goofy looking bots that customize themselves to the need fit, but the typcial trope "No one knows where they came from, but at least they can crack a good joke"-bot. They're a bit mentally slow on street-smarts, so they can't dodge or do stealth things very well. There isn't a sub-race to these guys, unless you count all robots under this category. Regardless, you only pick Skeletons as your race, no sub-races are currently available for these guys. Patience.
3. Hive - To put this simply, it's anthills but with a tribal/soap opera for a government. The queen is never around, and you only play as a male. The males follow a hierarchial monarchist rule where following (Or sucking up to, or killing, whatever suits them) their superior is the key to getting rank, rather than using free-willed effort. The only exception is the character you play as, since you obviously are free-roaming. You must have made someone the wrong type of cake.
(a.) Princes - A free-roaming prince is a sad tale. You were born a life of ease, now you've either lost to a competetor's challenge, or you were just dropped out for some corrupt reason. You obviously can't breed with other races, and you're obviously male. Your lineage, unless you somehow knock up the queen, is done for. Since they were just born to yell at people, they're not good with using any sort of tools, and their strikes are way too soft to come off as tough. Typical requirements for little man syndrome.
(b.) Worker Drone - The economical backbone. They do all the hard stuff and it's not like someone's around to give them the credit they earn. Basically retail business in a third world country. They, just like Soldiers, never see the queen. Can't cook or study well, and their attacks are also squishy.
(c.) Soldiers - Good at beating things up and.... just stop. Terrible all across the board. Don't do this. It's a hard life if you want to go a solo run with this guy if you're going for an econimic-type run.
4. Shek - An entire race of Tsunderes. It's like two clumps of iron and a lizzard had a wild night in the hotel. Everything is just beat-em-up and they have a hatred buldge for anything not stronk. No Sub-races here, but both genders are available. Good for bodyguards who want to wield some extremely heavy sticks. Females unironically like those who carry thus spoken heavy sticks. Don't get any ideas from that.

III. What are some long-term tips?

This depends heavily on how you want to play.
There is NO end-goal in this game besides staying alive.
So do as you please. I'll give you some starter ideas.

1.Money is priority.
You can't find food laying on the ground, unless you want to take it by "other" means... From others. No food grows in the wild, or so I'm led to think.
How do I get money fast without crime?
Two things come to mind. Mining ores, and luring bandits into guards.
(a) Mining - Mining ores is the easy stuff. create the "Use" Job on an ore right-clicking an ore vein, hold SHIFT, then release the right-click on USE. You'll automatically mine until there's 5 (Iron and ore. Other things like stone come in different numbers)
(Pack them into a trader bag, then sell them at a store. Rinse and repeat. The closer the ores are to a store, the faster you make money. Waystation, which is South-East of Okran's Pride (Green area, middle of the map, to the right) is by far the fastest way to pull that off.
Keep doing this until you have enough to buy about 5 rations of food in your inventory, and about 3K-6k cash. Once you do, look around in a bar for someone to hire. Don't pay attention to mercenaries, you don't want those guys as they cost WAY more than they're worth, in the beginning.
After you do that, just have the second person mine with you. Keep repeating the steps mentioned until you have about 5-6 people and 50K in supplies.
Next, go to Okran's Pride. Look for a farm, and buy one or two bulls, plus associated bull bags. Stats don't necessarily matter in the beginning, so try for a cheap one.
Now you can go back to waystation, and start making more money by selling your ores in greater quantity. Do this until you feel important.
WARNING ABOUT WAYSTATION: SHEK BESERKERS, AND SKIN-EATING SPIDERS. SELF EXPLANATORY.
(b.) Silly Bandits
Find somewhere with bandits, lead them into a city with guards, then take the bandit's weapons to sell. Never fight them, as you are puny and they are many.

2. Stats are important to pick early.
Don't worry about going for every stat on every character, just keep them specialized on one task. This gets their EXP and YIELD in that field higher, and organizing is much more easy.

3. Pick your battles wisely.
You won't die to humans as easily as you would to Fogmen or Skin Spiders, who will eat you alive-- With the exception of cannibals.
There are two "Safe-route" fights where you can get the <3 beat out of you and not technically lose much.

(A)The first is a bar brawl. Go to some outpost and mess with a bar thug. The thugs instantly target you together, so either bring some sick ninja skills or alot of friends if you want to win these.
If you lose, they just carry your KO'd body to the front door. If you have a medic about a mile out of town, waiting, you can just get them to heal you once you're carried out, thus infinitely farming toughness. Odd how that works, really.
Don't do this in a Shek town, or any other type of big-city bar. This leads to slavery.

(B) You can get carried off by slave marketers or guards to be put in a cell and forced to be a slave. Being a slave isn't a game-over, and you technically get EXP for laboring, so it's not a "Bad thing", but you're known as an escaped slave the moment you break free, which puts a bounty on your head, and guards in any town will automatically know you're a slave. Knock someone out and take their clothes, or just loot some KO'd person for theirs to not look like a slave. This may or may not work, depending on how much of a free-person you appear.

4. Stick to what you do, not what you want in a nanosecond.
It's easy to get distracted, but don't overdo something. Measure twice, cut once.

5. Pick factions that you want to hate you, and those you don't.
There isn't necessarily a "Good-Guy" faction in the world. There's "Neutral" at best. The three big factions are corrupt and stupid. Pick one or two to hate you, and befried the vice versa. This helps you plan what you want to do in the future.

More Detail into the game mechanics?

Most of the stats are self-explanatory, but there are some things that don't get talked about since it's a bit over-looked, so I'll put/add things here that skip over most people's heads.
1. Jobs.
Jobs are the micromanagement parts of the game that are done autonomously while you're focusing on something else. The AI prioritizes top to bottom.
This includes, but is not limited to, farming, mining, crafting, and hauling TO.
These all fall under something where they pull a resource out of a specific container to be placed somewhere else.
This means that generic storage, like Animal Bags and generic storage boxes, cannot be emptied unless manually done so.
Ores, food, building supplies, refined ores, and the likes, all have a specific container they can be placed in that can automatically be retrieved from when a job requires that specific resource. Be sure the doors to these are not locked away from the people using them.
Follow and Bodyguard Follow tends to be more passive while Bodyguard means you'll hunt someone down if hostile. Be sure the person you are following also engages in combat if necessary, otherwise the person will ignore any threats that attack those who are following you. The best way to solve this is to have a group bodyguard one person, then that one person bodyguards one person in the group. Click on the first person mentioned, then have that person be the person you navigate your group with. This causes everyone to be protected. Be sure they all are using the travel speed that has a red-man on it. This causes everyone to travel at the exact same speed (Though sometimes people get separated a bit due to obstacles and odd AI)

2. Public and Private buildings.
Every town has public buildings if the town itself is public. However, have you ever wondered what that means? Left-click a building somewhere and look at the bottom left of your screen.
Each building has a "Public" or "Private" restriction. These can range from day/night times with shops, to personal NPC properties.
If you see a price tag, that building is for sale. You can use that building as a storage place, a shop, or whatever have you. If you want it to be private, you can click the bottom left button after you've bought it. People will only legally enter if it is set to public. Public is only useful if you want to build a shop, or lure random NPC's in to be knocked out and enslaved behind closed doors. Be sure to build a wall so that thieves and guards can only enter through a small funnel, making guarding your home easy.
Private is also good if you want to build a refinery of sorts. Mine stuff, refine, sell, repeat. Using a sell desk in a public building of yours, close to private that makes stuff is a fast way for cash, and you won't be affected negatively by the faction since you're using state property rather than building some massive base right next to them. This is the safest trading route in the game.

3. Population limit.
Sadly, you have a limit to how many people you can own. This eliminates your dreams for an army, unless you have a beefed PC and the associated mods. Then, well, grats on being loaded. Otherwise, you're stuck with stock settings.
I'd strongly reccommend you change settings that fit your current party size. Smaller armies, smaller odds of armies, etc. Once you build a big-boy base, you can beef it up, but going small is reccomended, personally.

4. Combat routes.
It's better to set roles in combat accordingly than have some tank that suddenly wants to dodge attacks. A good setting is to have your villager-like people invest in lightweight fighting, while your strong characters beef up the big swords. This gives enemies a harder time prioritizing, as one character never gets hit, while the other doesn't even care if he does. If you want to invest in ranged weaponry, be sure to check what the ranged weapon relies on, and keep that invested in only a small population, as most fights will be up-close. This means friendly fire is common.

5.Raiding towns.
I've personally never done it, as I prefer keeping on most people's good sides (Not like I'm just using terribly programmed AI as a means for millions of free cash spilling at my feet for no reason at all, or anything) but raiding towns gets you good loot. The only issue being that it negatively affects global faction relations to the town owners, which in turn can cause bounties, assasinations, and the likes, all at your doorstep. Be careful who you pick fights with, as everything you own, besides cash, can be "dissuaded."

Picking Factions

There are 3 main factions that you can side with.
1. The Empire. Oligarchist, corrupt, and just all-around greed-proned. They're the big-hitters with organization and military code.
They're easily recognized by the samurai/Japanese-themed clothes. If you've been to any major city in the game, you'll see ninja and samurai armor that can make you look like one, though wearing them in a city owned by the Empire will make them agitated. They're mostly mixed races, though it tends to just be meadowfolk that spawn in for the most part.
2. Holy Nation. Theology/Patriarchy that hates everything that isn't a white male. I'm not making this up, these are the legitimate Klan guys. They stick to sticks and stones due to blaming technology as straying away from their god, Okran. Building anything with tech beyond theirs makes them angry, as does them seeing Sheks. They will kill/enslave Sheks on sight, and they give women a harsh time. If you're a Meadowfolk male, they're the kindest faction in the game, even sporting you some free supplies here and there if you're in need.
3. The Shek. Led by a female warlord, the Shek pride themselves as insanely tanky fighters, which, by all means, they win by a landslide. Thick armor, hard-hitting, and always itching to get some action, wether it be winning a fight or losing it. They're racist to an extent, unless you can prove you hit just as bad as they do. If you come out victorious, they see you as one of their own. So, if you're carrying a big sword in Shektowns and one of them sees it, they'll challenge you, or humiliate you.
Wanderers will attack you for no reason. They just want to fight, not necessarily slave or kill, so there isn't necessarily any harm with them as long as you have a medic hiding in some corner until they leave. They seldom attack bases if you're in Skin-Spider areas, as it's obviously not their thing to die for no reason.
As I said, there isn't a good-guy faction. Sheks could be considered neutral, at best, so if you want less blood on your hands, you can go with them. Otherwise just do your own thing.

[moneydollars]

well first of all, it's sex, not gender, and only some of the hivers are "workers", not to mention they aren't a 1-for-1 with ants.

[Crimson23Locke]

I don't think scorchlanders are akin to or a metaphor for humans of african descent - you can play as a pretty brown greenlander, but I don't know any people on earth who have blue skin, golden eyes, and regenerate wounds faster than other humans. o.0 Fun guide though, good work!

[Sempa]

I don't mean to criticize your work here my guy, but hivers if any gender would be female, cause you know,, all worker ants are female.

[Derpington]

the only thing that I would add to this is the backpack/ animal pack food trick where anyone in your squad will take out of it the container nearby to cut down on micro. Other then that, this is pretty good and a better way to start then I normally do. Thanks dude

[A-1 Abdullah]

Don't mine copper its boring as hell, just sell downed bandits to slavers.

[./netrunner.sh]

Thanks for the help.

[League of Legends]

fun fact labouring is actually the globally agreed upon best stat

[Sleepy Coder]

the main thing you want to say away is the goat and beak things my god they run like a train

[NukerMunky]

PS, sweet guide to the author, very helpful.

[John Savage]

Dude you are so wrong about scorchlanders they don't have any penalties to science or bonus to stealing and there are white scorchlanders (Jewels, Stubs). Also the Holy Nation is not a damn kkk, they have black greenlander inquisitors who serve as leader and they are fine with scorchlanders. You are just putting your own racist bs on this guide it makes no sense because its not factual with the wiki.