This guide will contain spoilers for the early game. I've really prepared this to benefit those who have already progressed through the game (perhaps even completed it) who are looking for any ways to try to change things up upon restarting. Originally this was going to be a discussion board post, but I realized by the time I was done that it had become too lengthy for a typical post and converted it into a guide. This will be my first game guide I've ever published on Steam. (big whoop?)

If I had one major complaint about the game, it's the lack of randomization in soldiers, traits, and points of interest. During battles, enemies will follow the same patrol paths, you'll get the same loot, etc. I'm hoping the developers will make changes to promote the game's replay value. If they do (and I really hope they do), this guide will become irrelevant in many ways. But for now, you can try this.

If you notice when you start the game, some of the troops don't have combat roles, and unfortunately a few have some decent traits that would come in handy. Spoiler ahead:

If you have played through to Moscow already, you know all of your worker peeps will die in a fiery crash. The only ones who survive will be the ones you take in the squad for battle in Moscow. Your supplies and anything you craft will be destroyed. It seems like nothing you do before Moscow matters.

What if I told you that you could change the outcome a bit, so you aren't playing with the exact same tired faces each time you restart?

You can take the red pill and learn how you can use these 'extra' characters, or you can take the blue pill and go back to thinking that absolutely nothing you do before Moscow really matters. It likely won't change your experience all that much, but if you've ever been interested if any of the other soldiers you start with can be used after Moscow, this is how you can do that.

From this point there won't be any more blacked-out spoiler tags. If you just bought the game and are playing for the first time, continue at your own risk.

**Before I get into the details: Two of your starting soldiers are going to die in Moscow no matter what you do. Josef Kinsky and David Rozprym should probably be placed in, and stay in, the locomotive. Josef is an engineer with the pacifist trait, and David is a faint-hearted worker, and because of these traits, neither can take combat roles. In my experience, the engine is the best place for them to waste what is left of their pathetic, useless lives.**

Special note about:
Vit Kuklik
Intelligent (+1 INT) but Sickly (more likely to get illness later in the game)

[[[Credit to PorcoGonzo73: It is possible to save this guy. He starts with one role, engineer. However saving him requires more micromanagement than any other member of your squad. You will have to start/stop the train repeatedly, aiming for a sweet spot around 10kph before stopping again. Each time you do this, he should receive 10xp. If you continue to Moscow without stopping, he does not receive enough experience to level-up and unlock another role.]]]

Okay, here's exactly what I do to avoid a (totally) meaningless pre-Moscow game:

The goal here is to get enough experience for our non-combat workers/doctors to get a combat-role unlocked.

1) Grab everything you can in the very first mission. Search the whole map for supplies. Normally it wouldn't matter, because you will lose these after the crash in Moscow, but you *will* need them for this strategy. If I recall correctly, there should be 50 food on the map, but the game will only require you to collect 20 to complete the objective (check around all the burned out buildings towards the top of the map). As soon as you finish the very first mission, the train automatically departs.

**PAUSE the game**

Special note about training your doctors: Crafting before Moscow is not an option if you are playing the game for the very first time. You will need to have progressed in the game on a previous playthrough, in order for crafting to be available to you in the medical car from the beginning. I'm going to try to test the specifics, but you either need to have purchased the medical car and upgraded the 'alchemy' slots, or some other car that allows crafting (kitchen or workshop cars). None of these are available to you until you at least reach Penza. Also, don't delete your saves from your PC or the game will behave as if you're playing for the first time.
[[[Credit VanguardMk1 in the comments]]]:
Turning off "Show guides" in the options apparently allows you to bypass the restrictions on crafting without having had to have played the game through to Penza on a previous run.

2) Shift your two doctors to crafting in the medical car. Put your medic, Magdalena, into the healing doctor slot. You won't need her for now, she already has a combat role and so we're not going to worry about her experience gain at the moment. Set your doctors in crafting and research slot to start crafting med-kits on repeat.

DO NOT research the first-aid kits. Yes, you will be able to afford them, but don't do it. Researching at this stage of the game can cause you to be unable to craft them later in the game when you buy a medical car. [Confirmed this bug with personal testing, after being alerted by other players, and unfortunately it is still happening after the v1.0 patch] You can get more than enough experience for your doctors by crafting med-kits (the ones you use in battle.)

3) Going hungry: After the first 12-hours of day-shift, your troops will begin consuming food. We need to stretch our food supply as long as possible, because it will take us several days to actually reach Moscow with this strategy. Open the 'soldier overview' and put everyone on half rations (you can do this with one click by using the ration settings at the very top of the 'food rations' column). 'Hungry' status is not a major issue. It causes a minor decay in morale and increased risk for injury while working, which is manageable with the hospital car. In fact, you could probably just not give any food at all to the pacifist guy and the faint-hearted. I'd advise you to keep at least one of your engineers on half-rations though. Losing both engineers would probably be a bad idea at this point.

[[[*credit: Big Mike in the comments for discovering that food-consumption starts after a certain amount of time, not distance as I had originally thought. Because proper ration management is crucial, I've moved this step up in the order*]]]

**UN-PAUSE**

4) Do the next mission. It's up to you who to take, as it doesn't really matter at this point. The most important thing is to make sure you *collect all the supplies on the map.*

**PAUSE**

5) After the mission put Alzbeta, the new medic you found, into another healing-doctor slot (not crafting). Neither of the doctors in 'healing' will gain any experience unless someone gets wounded or ill and you put them in the treatment spots. That won't be likely, but it can happen before Moscow. I suppose you could intentionally try to get someone just a lil' bit hurt in the 2nd mission so that your doctors can get some practice, but the opportunity and the gains from doing so, probably are limited and not worth it.

6) Make sure you fill every spot in the artillery car, both cannons and machine guns. These positions, as long as they are filled, will generate 720 worker experience for every 12 hours on duty, for each soldier in the car. That's 720xp, for just sitting there doing nothing.

**UN-PAUSE**

7) Leave the station and wait for the pop-up from the major to tell you that you need supplies, and he's right. You need those supplies for this strategy. Stop the train and send a squad to the village and buy all the *herbs*. You don't need the coal, and the cloth is probably optional as long as you grabbed everything you could in the previous missions. On second thought, just go ahead and buy all the cloth and herbs.

**PAUSE**

8) Make sure anyone who doesn't have a combat role is either working in the medical car or as a worker in the artillery car (Except the two useless soldiers I told you about at the beginning, they should still be on the locomotive, wondering to themselves why they joined the military. Maybe they were drafted.). You can shift people in/out of the artillery car to make sure everyone gets some experience, but the key is to make sure workers who don't yet have combat roles take priority in filling those slots.

**UN-PAUSE**

9) Proceed along the rails to the 'break-down' event and send a squad to the forest and the lake. Your hunter and your herbalist should definitely be part of the squad. Once the repairs are made, move your train up next to the lake and pick the squad up.

**STOP THE TRAIN, and keep the game UN-PAUSED**

There's nothing to do here except park the train, let the game run and farm XP like crazy. Remain on half-rations and watch your troops' morale. You can pretty much let it safely drop gradually until it hits 50%. You'll have to micromanage this part a bit using consumables (an easier way to do this is by clicking on the 'consumables' button while you have the 'soldier overview' open, and from this screen you can grant consumables to soldiers by simply clicking on them as you scroll through the list, rather than having to open their profiles individually). You want the food to last but you don't want them deserting before you get to Moscow. Use cigarettes and vodka (which does carry an overdose risk, so be careful with that, you can safely avoid using the vodka) to keep morale up. You want to stretch your food supplies out as long as possible. You should have about 7-9 days worth of food (on half-rations) depending on how well you did with the forest and lake (hopefully you sent your hunter and your herbalist and got a nice bonus).

Cloth supply should be around 300 and your herbs close to 150 (or higher if you got really lucky with the RNG while foraging). Thanks to the medical car's already-present recycling upgrade, these materials are going to last you even longer than you think.

Once each soldier gradually gets enough experience (either by crafting in the medical car or sitting in the artillery car doing . . . nothing), they should rank up to lance corporal, granting them an attribute point and a role unlock.

**Critical point** Make sure you give **combat roles** to the leveled-up troops who don't have one. Don't waste it on unlocking cooks, doctors, engineers, or workers. You may need to use their attribute point to bump them up for a specific combat role.

**Unlocking a combat role and putting them in your squad for the Moscow mission, is what will save them after the crash in Moscow.**

Here's a breakdown of who you can save, who would otherwise be lost if you just run straight to Moscow without leveling them enough to obtain combat roles. They're listed starting with the most-useful at the top to the least-useful (in my opinion).

Viktor Severa, a doctor
Good: thrill-seeker (increased combat xp but less work efficiency), burglar, herbalist
Bad (sort of) Kind-hearted so he has less chance to hit in battle (bad unless you want to use him as healing-doctor)
Interesting character trait: "Thief" (not even really sure what this does as I haven't noticed it on anyone else, but it isn't the same as 'burglar')
Gustav Beran
Good, really good if you don't take the kitchen car: Hunter
Bad: Sickly (but this really won't matter early game until you hit the colder chapters)
Prokop Sysel
Good: Focused (+15% work efficiency)
Bad, but not too bad: Slow-witted (-1 INT)
Anna Davidova, another doctor
Good: I mean, come on . . . just look at her portrait. She's too pretty to die in a scripted train crash. Talented: (Increased xp gain for any non-combat role)
Bad: Careless (so she'll constantly be costing you resources if you send her out to POIs, 'lost the axe' . . . again?)
[She's ranked higher up in this list because, even though she's careless, she's likely going to be your most experienced doctor if you follow this strategy correctly and let her keep crafting until she just can't anymore. If she gets hurt just let your other doctors practice on her.]
Johan Kocourek
Probably not worth saving.
No positive traits.
Clumsy (-1 Dexterity) and Self-Conscious (-1 charisma)
'Entertainer' character trait.
Roman Palacky
Awful.
No positive traits.
Bad: Jinx (Bad luck to others in his squad.) Insomniac. (decreased stamina regain)
Has an interesting but probably useless trait: Indifferent: (doesn't care if other people die. I suppose you could keep him just for the peculiarity of having a cursed religious guy who doesn't give a crap if his comrades die. What a jerk.)

After you've milked absolutely as much experience from farming as you can (or want to), for as long as you can without running out of food or tanking your morale, and/or you're out of herbs, start the train moving and get to Moscow.

Decide who you want to 'save' by putting them in the squad you are going to use in Moscow. Whoever is not in that squad will not be with you at the end of the Moscow battle. The mission details recommend a squad of 8. You can fill all 10, so fill all the slots. You're probably gonna have to leave some people behind. Just sort through their traits and determine that yourself.

I'm about 95% certain that any equipment your troops take with them into battle will be with them at the end, provided you don't use them during battle. (I'll be testing this further to confirm). This won't drastically change the outcome. I suppose you could take 3 medics and leave the battle with 15 med-kits + what you find in battle. Or you could take 4 medics and leave with 20 med-kits. It really depends on what combat roles you unlocked. Take some extra machine gunners and get more MG ammo which can get kind of expensive. (do be mindful of how many actual weapons you have though, because they'll need weapons to be deployed, ex. at this point you only have 3 machine guns in your arsenal)

It's up to you.

Money, raw materials, and consumables (that can't be equipped) will be the same every time you leave Moscow (provided you pick up everything you can during the battle), as far as I can tell.

The experience you gain *does* carry over, so feel free to farm away, even if you have no interest in making any particular changes.

I'm not sure if pre-Moscow morale carries over, so I'd advise you to make sure that all members of the squad you take with you have their morale boosted using consumables just before starting the mission. Might as well use them since you're going to lose all that fish, cigarettes, coffee, etc. You don't want to come out of battle and be hit with desertions. I've never pushed things that far.

You may see one person in the "new soldiers" list in the post-battle summary who you can't find once you leave the battle (Edit: Frantisek Korb). I'm guessing he would be a 'fill in' soldier in case you didn't take a full squad into Moscow. The troop capacity for your train is initially capped at 18, so of those new soldiers, some might be left behind, and the game will automatically choose for you. (later you get to decide who to take and who to leave whenever you're faced with additional soldiers trying to join).

However, everyone you took into the squad before starting the Moscow battle *should* survive and be present after the battle. (at least that has been the case for me in the 3-4 times I've done this in testing). --obviously assuming they didn't die in combat or get left behind when you are ready to leave the battle.

I'm not sure if/how this strategy might affect achievements. Personally I'm not an achievement hunter, but that's just me; you have been warned.

General tip about power-leveling:

This has the potential to make the game easier. Some of you probably feel the game lacks enough challenge as it is. Some of you may be struggling. However you see it, take it into consideration. Having workers who are better at stoking means less opportunity for fuel waste. Higher skilled doctors means you're going to start with much faster healing (whenever you can afford to get a hospital car). This is in addition to the side benefits of early-game attribute gains. Abuse this strategy at your own risk.