How should I be playing this game?

I just started getting into this, and while I love the mechanics so far, I feel like I'm missing out on what it is I should be doing so my experience has already become kind of boring.

Basically I make sure I have a dozen or so people with me (any more than that and I seem to get very little to no renown in battle), beat up some bandits, buy goods I can sell elsewhere for more money to build up my bank, do the quests where I bring letters and back and forth, then inevitably I lose a battle, which usually means losing a second battle after I escape because now I don't have my horse and all the money I got ends up going towards new troops and equipment.

So at the moment, all I'm able to really do is slowly build up renown and xp (though I'm at level 11 and the cost of another level has already become exorbitant). For a bit I tried having around 20-25 troops, but I would hardly gain any xp or renown so it seemed foolish to do that even though I was winning battles more handily.

So what should i be doing differently? Or is this just how it goes until you have a lot of renown and then you can start asking the generals with huge armies to follow you and take over cities and stuff?

Submitted February 23, 2018 at 09:49AM by leuno http://ift.tt/2HG9LON