I feel it's important for a game like this to try to get out information about it regardless of not all the features, etc being set in stone. There is a reason that I made a post about this instead of using the discord access I was given with the founder's pack. Now, I can completely understand mistaking me for one of those unreasonable asses that you find on game forums... I did express my frustration in a decidedly ranting fashion. But I think it's still important to be out there in text format so I'll try to answer my own questions for anyone reading this post later.
I did read some comments on by people that have been playing this for a while that recent builds seem to start with more enemies around them than in past builds. I'm sure this is something that will ebb back and forth as game is developed. My frustration came from not being very good, being new to the mechanics, etc. The squad walking in and killing my village on the first day only happened once and it was just bad rng. Sometimes that is just what's going to happen when you have different starting points. That's also what adds a lot to replayability.
Secondly, I was watching a Let's Play and there is a toggle planned for the tutorial. Honestly, it's less of an issue now that I am now not restarting often.
In my current game, I have 12 villages and a bunch of warriors. Basically, I became Red Genghis and tried to slaughter everyone close to me while expanding to spread out and get more vision. I admit that I pretty much did everything myself at the beginning and didn't even send out people to gather until I had cleared the enemy towns from their area. With most of the area clear, I reset my karma using the chief skill and try to only intimidate. The positive karma is helping me start to actually get warriors to join me and filling up those villages.