u/VorganForever

say i am traveling a long distance and suddenly i find myself in dialogue with a bandit or hostile lord. i can choose to attack or i can choose to pay for safe passage, but because i did not notice them before they engaged in dialogue, i do not know if i am seriously out-manned or not.

like if its a close thing i want to keep my gold and fight, but then i do that and it turns out they have 100 trained troops compared to my 26 looters. or i choose to pay for safe passage only to see after that they were the ones with a few looters and i could have won easily but now i can no longer attack and worse now i cannot raid the village i was on my way to get so i just have to waste time camping in the nearest safe city.

how do i determine in the conversation window how many troops they have, if i did not notice them on the map before they engaged in dialogue? does any mod fix this?

Currently stealth camping in tiger country, its pretty scary. I have not seen one but I just keep thinking about it all night, every time i hear something loud snapping branches i freeze up. I have to keep reminding myself that in the decades i have camped in the woods its always been the smallest animals that make the most noise and snap things you wouldn't think they could but its not helping my anxiety much.

the thing is I am stuck here for a few more days maybe a week if what i have planned doesn't go through and I am pretty worried it may not. I cannot go back to the town because i have no money and have been mugged already and basically told that foreigners are not welcome and if they find me sleeping outside again it will be worse than my money they take. the cops are useless but made it clear that although they could not do much for me that I should take the threats seriously and leave the area, but when i mentioned having no funds to leave they basically just shrugged it off. the next town is more than 60 miles away and if i walked it I would have to go through an area well known for tiger fatalities including some this year and i cannot walk 50 miles in one day. So i am staying on the outskirts of the town instead but there are supposedly tigers here too and a sighting not that many weeks ago according to the locals.

but either way, i am out here for at least a few more days and its been two years since a tiger fatality in these specific area i am in but there are signs warning about them all over and i am terrified. I just have a basic tent, which i have camo'ed up using a black tarp like material, actually gardening sheet i think its called, which multiple layers of branches around it inside this like grotto of bushes and high grasses with a tree for aerial cover.

how can i keep myself calm while stuck out here and what can I do to reduce the chances? do tigers even know to attack tents or would they see them as some strange solid object and move on without testing?

my nerves are okay in the day when i can just scroll reddit in my tent and not think about it but as soon as it starts getting dark i think every sound is a tiger and even early today when i was cooking a fish a good 50 feet from my camp i kept getting that feeling in the back of my neck like i was being watched and so i just ate it half raw and climbed and went back in my tent. i dont leave the tent except to eat because i get so paranoid i keep thinking i see orange in the distance everywhere. any advice for my nerves?