Better explanation on the difficulty settings?

Well, bandit mobs are pussys, I imagine that even the basic militia would be enough to kill most groups, so I would hope that they are not so dumb to suicide themselves by attack a town.  Should be a rare band of bandits that could take out a town.  

But, on normal, the monsters are not inclined to attack player cities, and with sparse, that means there are not that many monsters.  A game you designed, would be made so that the AI and you expand more quickly and engage each other, with little interference from wild monsters.  If you want more dangerous monsters, set the world to dense and hard.

The first thing to note is that there is TWO difficulty setting. The first, you encounter is the "world" setting, this basically dictates monster behaviors , lair distribution and strength. The second difficult setting, on the opponent's page, dictates the individual AI (or collectively) difficulty, intelligence, and bonuses/penalties.

As to monsters:

From my understanding, monsters tend to ignore capitals (first cities) so that players don't get wiped out. Monsters also look at city defenses to see if they actually have a chance before attacking. So just your typical few millitias will dissuade your average bandit group from trying unless they have a lot of guys. Most of the time, you only have to worry about big monsters running straight for your cities, the random mobs tend to just walk around destroying improvements waiting to be killed.

If you want the monsters to be MORE aggressive, turn up the world difficulty. This makes the monsters stronger, and thus making them more likely to attack. Do realize though, if you're not prepared, the monsters will wreck everything.

The best setting for world difficulty is 'challenging' - on this setting the monsters are supposed to attack you and the AI equally whereas on the harder settings they will ignore the AI and attack you. This isnt explained ingame but Brad mentioned it here on the forum

There were NO units guarding the town in the example I posted above.  NONE.  I left it undefended on purpose to try to get the AI mobs to attack it.  They refused to, even though they were sitting one square away for 20 turns.  

That is the only time I've had my faction attacked in my game of around 300 seasons.  This is on normal difficulty.  I'm sorry, but under "normal" difficulty, your faction should be attacked more often than that.

I don't think you understand some of the game mechanics.  All cities have default defenders.  They are unarmored militia with the best one handed weapons you can create.  The bigger and more advanced a city is, the more defenders it naturally has.  

Uh....gonna call bullshit on that.  The bandits walked in and the city dissappeared.  No unarmed "default defenders" to be found.

You might want to report that as a bug then. Every city starts with a militia (unarmored, not unarmed), you usually get 2 groups of militia and 1 group of archers in a typical city... and way more if it's a fortress.

You are playing Fallen Enchantress right?  Not War of Magic?  I know how the game works, I am not bullshiting you.  Every city has default defenders.  Unless you ran into some kind of game bug, there should have been a battle between your city defenders and the bandits.  And I said unarmored, not unarmed.  

Every settlement I've started in every game has started with no defenders.  I've had to build a unit to get a defender every time.  This is not a bug, this is how the game works.

I don't think you understand how the game works, you actually have to build a unit to have a defender in a settlement.  There is no "default" defender.  Every settlement starts without a defender.

You are wrong, and laughably so.  I can't understand how you can be so obstinately obtuse.  Can't help someone like you.  Please keep telling me I am wrong about something so obvious, it makes me chuckle. 

GaelicVigil, Kalin and Lord Xia are two of the long time players, and you can learn a lot from them. 

Every city is supposed to have defenders that you can only see in action when it's attacked, or you can check out in the detail window, on the left, above the buildings, above the city level.  I'll attach a picture in a few minutes.

If your cities do not have default defenders, and bandits take them without resistance, either:

1. You have found a bug. (There is one which has that effect, when multiple factions attack a city at once)

2. You are playing a mod.

3. You have just conquered the city, and moved your troops out.

Never seen this happen.  The Defenders (City Militia) are always there.

No mods, never used one for FE.  I've played many, many games without a default defender in my settlements.  I'm not quite sure what you guys are talking about.  I'll take some screenshots and post them later on of before/after settling.  No defenders.

Just so you know, they are not going to show up on the main strategic map. To see them while not in combat, you'll have to look at the city screen as Tuidjy is showing in post #13 above. Look where he drew in the red arrows and writing.

Do you have the icons I pointed to in my post? Can you post a screenshot of a city's detail screen? Does the enemy have default defenders?  can you give us a save?

I'm amazed that no one else has ever observed this.

Xia is spot on and trying to help.  There are defenders (militia groups) now.  There wasn't always in some early beta.  We could even point to a thread where Brad talks about the defenders being basic police like forcce and not the absolute best equipped.  Which I bring up because it would be further proof if you don't believe us on the defenders. 

You must have some kind of bug or something.  I can't imagine you not noticing cities having defenders if you have played more than a few hours.  It seems impossible to not have noticed, so it must be some kind of rare bug.

Maybe he put outposts, not settling the area? Outposts do not have defenders....

I would hope he knows the difference, and even then he should recognise that his first city has defenders.  It crossed my mind though, but it's really hard to believe he would mistake an outpost for a city.

Did I say outposts?

Sounds to me like he thinks "defenders" mean selectable troops you can move out of the city and into the map.  I myself did not know about militia until one of my cities was attacked and found my very inadequate army backed up by just enough militia to make a difference.  I did not know, in fact, that you could view them anyway, so thanks for pointing that out.

So yeah, if you're city was conquered without a fight, that's definitely a bug.

There is no reason to be defensive, yes some of our questioning might sound a bit condescending but that is because you are obstinately defending that you don't have a part of the game that everyone else has. We are trying to figure it out.

Yeah, no.  Bandits attacked my settlment, I saw the regular combat pop-up.  Pop-up disappeared, and settlement was completely wiped off the map.

I'm just asking.  Did I say outposts?