Just started playing around with the game, and I really like how much exploration and experimentation is involved.
One of the things I got to doing, once I had a good enough team, was "farming" the local bandits. Making about 2000 per fight from knocking them out is the best income I can find early on, and I'm wondering.. is it possible to "depopulate" the game?
I'm almost out of the local bandits, which is fine, but it'll be a bummer if I eventually kill everyone on all these maps (judging by a lot of the mechanics, the game seems designed to be played over the course of years worth of turns). Is there anything that adds new enemies over time?
I was going to answer this initially but seeing that Seamonkey replied almost immediately with a perfectly good response I demurred as I'd not played much at that point lately and anything I said might be out of date. However I've played a lot the last week or so thus I'm better able to answer this in more detail now.
First off if you play on 'Grimdark' setting with 'A Dying World' enabled you'll start with lower Control which means a faster refresh rate on recurring targets and until you reach about 20 Control 'extra' targets that can be quite lucrative as some of those randoms will contain three females. You'll have much lower Prosperity too, though, which means any Mercs with 'Ammo Pack' might not see that enabled until a hundred or more days into the run, but don't worry you don't want to use much ammo when Slaving.
The most important thing is, keep Stokke Hills clear! That's the main source of your income as it includes the recurring four targets in a diamond formation in the center and two others at the bottom left, the furthermost left being a five adversary team that includes one female. The one a little more to the right of that is a (rarely) recurring lone female who will take the first shot. I seldom fire weapons and try to train Melee/Strength on my main combat team up to 80 as soon as my Stamina is ~80-100 so they go down easy and I can start in the advanced position. After every battle (nowadays) I go up and over to Watery Eyes to 'Add to Household' and then go back to Stokke Hills to gather more. Stokke Hills is the gift that keep on giving with those three sets of recurring targets.
There's also a recurring target at the top left of Watery Eyes, a lone rifleman who seems to drop his rifle more often than most. Darkmere has the Highwaymen of Darkmere who likely will take the first shot and you don't want to mess with until you have Ayden as odds are they'll hit your top attacker with two coilgun shells, two bursts of Automatic Rifle fire and a shotgun before you even get to fire, and while they're relatively lightly armored (Combat Armor for one or two and Heavy Leather for the rest) there
is five of them. The upper right of Marston Avenue has three in a triangle, some of which will occassionally include a female. These will always refresh eventually, though with lower control it will happen more often, sometimes every single day in the beginning.
Other recurring targets while Contol is low include Cole's Canyon which has three, Whitehaven which has one and Westside where you can find three or four. Sometimes Redhaven will get overrun (fire at the bottom) amd you'll have to take out some targets before you can leave.
There's also four targets with limited refresh, the largest being the Swampmen in Preacher's Pond. There's about seventy-some of those and be advised you can use the Mad Preacher to 'Add to Household' so you can keep fighting without having to go back or lose some to limited capture capacity. The Dockyard Punks have about thirty as do the 'Redhaven Raiders' and they're all easy like the Swampmen. A good strategy once you have four sets of NPC Combat Armor (or three and Kate) is to take slavegirls when facing these to build Respect as they're easy to take down and Respect is hard to come by. Oh, there's also the Kasey's Park gang of maybe three incarnations of three antagonists on the upper right next to Cassius.