Gotta say, ive never had a problem. If you cant do it at lvl 14 come back later. Once your in the 20s you should be able to hold you own against pretty much anyone. Noldor on yourside always helps too.

i had two playthroughs recently and you're right, i too think bandit camps are too difficult. i'm almost level 40 and i still have trouble even with ruby rune armor and ruby rune bow with 10 power draw and 450+ proficiency.

The number of enemies you encounter in hideouts/camps scales up with your level, though POP will always stick in some elite enemies into them, even if you're level 1. Best advice I can give is to gradually work your way through them, keeping your troops nearby and taking out small groups of enemies as they spawn, without giving them the chance to converge on you and overwhelm you. And always hold up your shield.

If it seems impossible, then there's no shame in bumping down the self/ally damage numbers temporarily.

It was a big surprise to me to see the difficulty on the bandit hideout in the marchant quest at the begining.

I understand that this mod is supposed to be harder than Vanilla. So for this quest, I trained a lot my first group. I went at level 5 with a bunch of Fierdsvain Axeman and Fierdsvain Light Infantry. But there was a lot of hightwayman, blackheard knights and local bandit chief, who tear them to piece with ally/self number at normal.

If that is the intented purpose (but I wonder then how to level up the PC), at least there should not be an attack of hiedout at the end of the marchant questline. The spike of difficulty beetwen the 4 robber to defeat for the first part of the quest and the hiddout attack seem to me way to hight.

just use Ctrl+Alt+F4 to knock out all enemy troopz

I struggled with them at first. if you haven't learned yet. maybe a quiting without saving run is what you need so you can cheese it.

Anywho, you learn fairly quickly that you are underpowered in PoP but that you can use all gimmicks to your advantage. i suggest having your few troops follow you and then charge them within a couple feet of the enemy. they slaughter that small group, then have them follow. rinse and repeat. you get involved to help out, but never act as a "frontliner" during these fights until you are sure you fight better than the AI.