Hello! New player on FF, absolutely loving the game so far, my after-work decompression last few days. However raiders whoopin on me first couple runs, during my learning phase. Idyllic village first run, following tutorials, beginning year 8, not nearly as optimized as could be of course but not bad in my opinion? Raiders were gonna hit, got the alert. I was woefully under prepared, 16 raiders incoming. My military was 6 strong mostly crude weapons and no shields. My total population was roughly 80-90 or so. What did I do wrong? What exactly determines raider numbers and timing? How can i better prepare in the future? Don’t really want to do pacifist mode yet, want to learn and adjust to battle mechanics currently. Appreciate any help 
Raiders are usually a fraction of total pop typically 10-20% or so depending on difficulty. Before 100 pop 2 or 3 well placed towers with walls can keep them at bay. Utilize your town center also for defense. Hunters can help also with some micro management. I usually don’t get a barracks until 150-200 pop based off difficulty. Keep your town compact helps too
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The first raid always seems to be difficult for me since you have little time to prepare.
You can’t have much military unless you have gold, weapons and population.
This is the approach I use:
- Get your sawmill built quickly to get the planks needed for fletcher and market. Also needed to upgrade town center to tier 2.
- Build a fletcher shortly after getting your sawmill up and running so you can make bows and arrows. This is required whether you use towers or soldiers.
- Build your first market to start acquiring gold.
- Build enough housing/population until you are getting at least 24 gold per month. This will also provide needed population for soldiers and food production.
- Explore enough using the flag markers to be able to salvage a few salvage sites for gold and, if lucky, weapons and/or shields.
- Build the trading post to start selling items to be able to purchase shields and, if needed weapons. Crude weapons are better than nothing, but shields make a big difference. Soldiers can be brittle too if not equipped with shields. (Note: If salvaging has provided a few shields and weapons you can slide this step to be the last)
- Build a fort, of course!
- Once you are getting at least 24 gold per month you can obtain four archers, although shield bearing soldiers are much sturdier but more expensive. I then add shield bearers or more archers as time and resources allow.
Depending on how well you are growing and how much gold you have from salvage and taxes, you can spend gold and resources to build festival pole, shrine and school so housing can upgrade, providing enough income to outfit more soldiers. Upgraded housing greatly increases your gold income but takes 400 gold total for all three buildings. But the shrine will cost 4 gold per month.
In the research tree, obtain taxation and upgrade to level 2. Obtain the knowledge tree advances for militia and soldier training.
Produce hide coats to provide better protection to soldiers and villagers.
Ideally you will have six soldiers with a combination of archers and shield users by the time the first raid hits. This would require a tax input of 42 gold/month for four archers and two shield users, which is difficult and typically requires that some housing has upgraded to tier 2. Six archers is more affordable at 36 gold/month but you may only have enough time/resources to get four archers.
Towers can be a lower cost option to soldiers, but you never know what direction the raid will come from, making it hard to cover the first raid. You can build your towers near the town center but the raid may destroy many of your outer buildings before they get in range, if they don’t just plunder and leave. I personally prefer soldiers, so others may have better tactics on how to deploy them for the first raid. A combination approach with 4 archers for mobility and a couple of towers might also be feasible, but I’ve never tried it.
The first raid can be a tricky balance regardless of what approach you take. You may not be able to accomplish all of the things I noted, but this should give you an outline of sorts to try. It is definitely a race in time and requires juggling resources/food/housing allocation.
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To preface I only play on vanquisher where the timings are a bit harder to deal with.
The first raid is on a specific year based on difficulty as far as I can tell, on vanquisher it occurs on year 4. After that raids occur every 2-4 years. Ocassionally you can get raids in back to back years, but its extremely rare. I’ve only seen it happen 2-3 times in nearly 750 hours played.
The early raids are usually dealt with using 3-4 hunters and kiting the raiders past the town centre aftering ringing the bell. Hunter’s cost no gold and are not that much worse than archers. The biggest issue is selecting them can be a pain.
To get safer raid defense, the goal is to get 4 light infantry. I do not like archers, and I only ever make them if I’m desperate. They require more micro management to use effectively and can die very quickly. Light infantry are very strong and can handle many times their own number. As Dunford said, shields are the most important part, then weapons, then hauberks. How you get the equipment depends on the game. You could get your iron industry going and craft everything yourself, but this requires a fair bit of time and tech investment. You could buy everything from the trading post, but that’s expensive.
My favoured strategy is to just spend 1 tech point on the armoury. Shields are quick to craft and cheap on materials. For hauberks I buy 48 iron bars from the trading post, I can usually self produce the coal/pelts. This usually costs around 1000 gold total and allows for producing 4 shield/4 hauberks. You can save gold if you find hauberks/iron bars in salvage sites.
Weapons are a bit more annoying to obtain, and you’d ideally get them from salvage sites. Buying them from the trading post is quite reasonable if you can afford it. There is also a trick you can use. When the raid warning shows up you can turn hunter cabins off, which means they put their weapons back in storage. Then your soldiers can pick them up instead. Just remember to turn the hunter cabins back on once soldiers have the weapons. It’s quite useful for early raids if you’re struggling to get the equipment in time.
Also as Dunford said, Militia and Soldier Training techs are important. I’m also going to point out the Tower Shields tech, which you can get with the 25th tech point. This is a massive survability boost for any shield wearers. A big part of the reason light infantry are so good for a long time. When you have the equipment and techs, 4 light infantry can go for quite a while as the only required defense; and you can always add more if needed.
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簡単に言うと:タウンホールの周りに塔を建て、それらの周りを木の防壁で囲いましょう。
Thanks for the detailed reply! Seems that missing shields was a critical error on my part, ill definitely focus on production of those as well as weapons first. Also, for some reason never occurred to me that hunters could fill the role of early game defense, so that’s something I’ll have to work on as well. Recruiting soldiers is a very costly endeavor early game for me, i spent everything to panic draft some shield less and half weaponless infantry, they actually did better than i expected but were still overrun sadly
Appreciate the help! I think a big downfall for me was relying on very little gold from market taxes, and only discovering trading posts and how lucrative they can be, way too late (year 7 or so). By the time the raids hit, there was little option for me other than panic and die, sadly. Now taking militia tech and increasing number of hunters to hopefully ward off early threats until i can build a proper standing army.
I am thinking that hunters and towers are going to be my first priority, i never considered the viability of hunters as an early game defense, but it makes sense considering they have weapons 
A barracks at 20 houses seems like it would be a bottle neck for the economy. Towers can be turned off for the late fall winter saving 5 gold per month for 4 months. Gold is the most scarce resource early game
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You can disband your soldiers after the raid and just rehire them next time a raid occurs. They only end up hired for a month or two at a time then. You lose veterency, but it’s not doing much in the early game anyway.
Can also use soldiers to clear a raid camp right after dealing with a raid, and you’ll normally end up gold positive if you disband after clearing the camp.
That’s what I do too. I position my barracks together very close to the vault which seems to help speed up the collection of hauberks, shields and weapons. I also don’t bother with walls and towers – but I’ve only ever got to about 700 population so that might change with a bigger town.
There is a trick to equip soldiers much faster after recruiting.
If you just recruit them, they will walk to storage and pick up their equipment. However, you can give them a move command after recruiting. Firstly they’ll run to the location instead of walking and this location can be towards the incoming raid so there’s no doubling back. When they get to the location and stop moving for a few seconds; any equipment they can use will teleport to them. They just have to stop briefly, so as long as they’re not directed straight into combat it’s fine. The same equipment teleporting happens when disbanding, it all just teleports back into storage.
I also never really build walls, although they can help slow down raids when they’re attacking from 5 directions. My current settlement is over 2000 pop and still doesn’t have walls. If you’re comfortable enough with soldiers, you can manage just fine without walls. Towers I only ever build to be unstaffed for vision, or as expensive bear defense in late game.
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That’s a clever trick with the recruitment process, I’ll give it a go.
I like the look of some of the walled cities people have made but I’ve always got more important uses for my stone - a really good money maker early on for one!
As others have said, walls do not a fortress make. They serve the same purpose as the old Maginot Line or barbed wire. They slow down your foes or force them into more restricted avenues. I only use walls to protect remote work locations or if lakes form a natural choke point. They do look good when artfully placed around your town center though!
I also don’t depend on towers, although I do use them much the same way as a wall. They cause the enemy to attack them while my soldiers are either still getting to the fight or engaging the foe. Accordingly I place a tower at remote work sites or at the far corners of my domain. They also help control those hungry bears.
Stout hearts and sturdy soldiers are the best defense.
Edit: I tried Kholdy’s suggestion about disbanding military units and re-establishing them when raiders appear and it works well, thanks!
I do have one caveat though. Make sure you have enough weapons, armor and villagers to restore your military units when raiders appear. Bows, arrows, weapons and hide armor can deplete over time. In early game stages these items can be be low in stock. Shields, since they are only used by infantry, do not deplete.