Good god, is there any way to properly deal with marauding parties that constantly conquer my buildings? One party of a goblin and an imp razed a village, razed my thieves guild, and took a statue in two turns while I hustled back to get them.

Where do they come from and how do I stop them? It seems a little much to post military unites in every building I own, no?

They come from the buildings currently occupied by marauding parties. There'll always be a few, but what you'll want to do is quickly clear out a safe perimiter to keep the numbers down (good way to level up your hero early on). You'll want one or two other parties, patrolling to stop your buildings being retaken, and slowly working outwards to take on the higher level buildings.

I tend to have a few cloaked thieves just dotted around to spot parties, that way you don't need to sit in the buildings, you'll see them coming and can intercept.

Yeah, I've definitely found that having multiple parties with specific purposes (guarding recently acquired assets, for example) is the way to go.

Also, when I produce three or four summoned units and assign them to something I want defended, like a brewery or statue on my borders, marauders are less likely to tag them and run.

Thank you for the reply!

Careful not to get over-involved with the marauders. They are mostly for leveling up your heros. It's the enemy you need to concern yourself with. Death get quite a big army fairly soon, I'd advise quickly moving to one of your sympathetic races temple, get yourself an heir and an extra city.

Which race are you playing?

Usually the first thing you should do after liberating your temple is to quickly conquer/liberate one of your neighbors with highest disposition. Then clear out all the dwellings near your cities/important structures. When you clear out your part of map you'll see very few marauders since they'll spawn far away from you.

A couple of useful tricks to know with respect to marauders:

They never go after occupied buildings. Even if you just put one scout in a structure, so long as it's inside the structure marauders won't touch it.

They never enter and destroy a building on the same turn, they always occupy the building, wait for one turn, then destroy it on the next turn, so if it's a structure near your stronghold you do have an opportunity to quickly train up some men and send them after the marauders.

More importantly, if they're occupying one of your training structures (barracks/mage tower/thieves guild) you can kick them out by having a unit enter your stronghold. If you've got something in your stronghold (and you always should), just select the party, click somewhere outside the stronghold to make it "exit," then click back on the stronghold so they'll go back in without expending movement. The act of entering a stonghold automatically claims all production buildings, so the marauders are forced out with no fight. If you simply don't have the resources on hand to fend off a band of marauders, you can repeat this trick for several turns while you wait for reinforcement to arrive.

Hmm. I never knew about the stronghold trick. Another thing you can do to resist invaders is to hire mercenaries, that is what they are meant for. Mercenaries have a very low hiring cost, but incredibly high upkeep, so you only want to use them for one or two turns before you disband them.