izigame.me

You are not stronger than anyone else.
Especially:
You are not stronger than a band of twenty bandits roaming the world in search of food.
You are not stronger than a pack of wild bonedogs.
You are not stronger than a city guard.
Kenshi is a very enjoyable, FUN game, but the FUN should be understood in a Dwarf Fortress sense.
If you hate Dwarf Fortress, you might not find Kenshi a pleasant experience.
If you love Dwarf Fortress though, as I do, may Armok smile upon your efforts, as there is a lot of FUN here to be had.
You and your team are going to have multiple unpleasant experiences.
Beaten up? Knocked out? Lost a limb? Jailed? Enslaved? Killed?
This will happen and you will carry your wounded to a bed, so they can recover, if you have managed to stabilize them enough to not lose them on the way. You will replace their limbs, break them out of jail, or you will bury them in the desert.
My experience of Kenshi after first few days of playing with it:
I've played it safe, had a house in a city, earning my living by some mining, cooking my own food, training the new orphan girl I hired from the Hub to do things around the house. Never stole a thing, except looting some bandits who died when they chased me to a ninja trading outpost. Ninjas ain't no joke.
On one of the mine trips we've got attacked by hungry bandits again. We've run to the guards, and they pacified the bandits, but my trusty companion Ruka got hurt in the head really bad.
I've carried her to the town, it was night, all shops were closed, and we had no bandages to stop her bleeding and they didn't have any at the bars. Got to use all my money, 6k cats, to hire a guy who said he is a medic. He was and he had the bandages and all the fancy medical stuff and he saved her. She got way stronger since then, my brave Ruka, sometimes she even helps City guards with the bandit criminals. The medic name is The Wall, he is a bit lazy, but we keep him busy training with the crossbow turret and making medkits at home. We're glad to have him.
Sometimes I go out in the desert, hunting goats, bonedogs, or mighty garru. It takes a lot of kiting with the crossbow to down an animal, but I can always use the training in both crossbows and running. I'll get better.
We've started our own camp, few minutes away from the city gates, wanted to mine stone, so we could make our own building materials, as the store in the city doesn't have such a strong supply. We had the production facilities set up, but not the walls, some raiders came, claimed the place as their own, they were armed and armored, we were not a match, so we just ran. We will get back our camp at Crossroad Wreck one day. The orphan girl got good at researching too and we already know how to build decent walls and proper crossbow turrets.
I frequently visit the explorers shop, just down the street when we run with Rukka with backpacks full of Iron every morning, to increase our strenght. They have books there, some of them tell stories about riches in the swamps, and the dangers there. We will go there too, in time.
Conclusion:
There is no winning at Kenshi. There is no victory condition set out for you. This is a good thing.
It is a storytelling device, a sandbox, a plaything.
You play it, like you would play with your lead soldiers back in the day when there were toys that were not computer programs.
Your experience depends entirely on what you chose to do when you play with it. Play it as the RPG, immerse in the story that unfolds, however grim and unforgiving it might be, and you will surely have an interesting story out of every attempt.
I bought it exactly for that, and if you're looking for a storytelling device set in a post-apo alien-world mad-max drifter samurai ninja robot setting... well, friend... there is no other game that will scratch that itch.

Update after 158 hrs in the game:
Squin life was going pretty slow and easy, as town life should be. We made pretty big money mining and we hired all the Shek warriors that were looking for work in Squin bars. They're Ruka's squad now and we call them "Black Guard". You should see them how they deal with bandits nowadays. Namir, tall as a mountain, with this tiny high quality sabre in his giant hand, Ruka with a plank worth twice as much as our house, sweeping it like a scythe through a field, cutting down the enemy as if they were blades of dry grass. Loudmouthed Kang and quiet Nines, both good with the Sabre too, and two medics, all well equipped with the best armor of our own production.
They're no joke now. The entire roof of our house was dedicated to their training for months. Weightbenches, training mats, attack training dummies, we had it all. Plus two cages where we kept whatever we could catch. A knocked out Garru, a wild Bonedog, or a Bandit. We mostly used those to train defense.
I've went to Hub once again, recruited that sweet cook Molly, she was the first person I ever spoke to in the Hub, back then, when I only had a rusted iron stick to my name, a ragged shirt and a pair of pants. She now makes our cactus food, while the orphan girl Heft works the crossbow turret at the Crossroad Wreck entry gate. We have double perimeter walls and enough turrets to perforate a small army to look like Garru cheese. Invaders do not get to live long. That group that threw us out of our town, back when we just placed first production facilities... Last time they came, the fight lasted around a minute and we had really hard time trying to stabilize just a few of their dying to save them for the fight house.
Times have changed. Our fields of cactus, hemp, and wheat whisper softly in the northern wind. We are essentially independent of Squin right now. Wind turbines whirl, lights flicker, water burbles in the wells. A life we have built in this at first sight inhospitable desert, did not come easy, but that makes us cherish it even more. In a shadow of this giant wreck of a mysterious ancient structure we have made a safe place to call our own. To build what we wish, and how we wish it. We've researched almost everything we possibly could from the books available at Squin adventure shop and I see our Chief Smith Engineer Foren sometimes standing on the roof of the industry building, looking west. We brought her from the waystation that way, and she says somewhere beyond there are places where hidden knowledge and treasures lie, waiting to get discovered and claimed.
We also brought a Bugman named Hep from that place. A funny looking, tiny, very thin fellow. An extraordinary nighttime operator. It is not a problem for him to sneakily knock someone out and carry them away. We had him actually steal a prisoner from Squin tower once. A cute, but angry looking girl with one hand. We brought her home, healed, fed, she didn't mind joining us. I mean, who would? We bought her a robotic arm from a Hiver caravan, it goes well with a drifter jacket. For now we've attached her as crossbow girl to the Special Ops squad. Our army needs to branch out, if we're to conquer the wasteland.
I imagine we will go west soon. Once we're ready. Until we do, remember our name.
It is: Iron Dawn.