Wow, I am impressed with your persistence! Clearly there is not quite enough information given by the game. I wanted to keep the information low, and let it kind of emerge from the game board, but there is clearly not enough. There are 3 levels of units. Villager upgrades to warrior or archer, warrior upgrades to berserker or knight and archer upgrades to mage. Then there is the special dragon knight that I am very happy to see that you discovered. But what the game does not tell you is when your group of guys can no longer upgrade, thus throwing them at goblins has no upside and you are wasting units. Goblins and Druids are semi predictable, because they will only have a chance to spawn on forest tiles, thus you can simply do your best to avoid forest tiles to avoid the possibility of an encounter. That is a good idea in the start of the game, since the more units you have, the more damage you deal as well. I have beat the game myself, so it is beatable, but it might require a decent seed and economic with when you take a chance against enemies. I am very impressed with how persistent you were in finding the mechanics, clearly that is not something one can expect from the average player, so the game needs better information. Thank you!