Personally I think it would be nice if they let us attach guards to a caravan to help protect them.  I don't know how many I lost to 3hp lowbie wolves that happen to spawn right on the road that any peasant with a stick could kill.

I also made a suggestion that would cure this problem at

https://forums.elementalgame.com/396348

In short it slows down the rate that the world changes due to researched technology.  Baddies come from Spawn points, Spawn points pop infrequently, and when they do they always start spawning the lowest level baddies. However spawn points come in layers each deeper layer containing harder dudes.  When a layer is defeated (By AI, human or NPC team see https://forums.elementalgame.com/396352 )it exposes the next layer if there is one.  The depth of a spawn point is decided by your tech level,  but you won't being to see new baddies from it until several turns later.

I would appreciate some thoughts on those as well.