One of the big ways that things change is when the prey get serious about hunting the predators down and not minding some collateral damage, indeed perhaps relishing some collateral damage. Unless you have special circumstances making a strong refuge — today often governmental limitations like the stuff called “anarchotyranny”, but historically sometimes natural geographical features raiders coming out of bad terrain, or across long stretches they can ride across more easily than their farmer prey can march, or across the sea in longboats — it can become a dangerous time to be a predator or merely to resemble one too much.

Today I doubt there are many suitable geographical refuges on the planet given anything like current transportation, communications, and weapons technology. And modern technology seems to give a large economic advantage to people with secure stationary bases, and gives economic power a lot of traction in increasing effectiveness in mobile warfare, so I think it’s not a good time to be a roving bandit unless it’s some powerful stationary actor’s hobby to protect you directly and/or to prevent your victims from protecting themselves. But we’re still working out the military practicalities of a lot of technologies so maybe I’ll be surprised somehow.

(None of this to say that good guys will win, just that if the big winners are bad guys they’re likely to be stationary bandits, not roving bandits.)

(It’s still relatively straightforward to cause so much trouble that a stationary entity has trouble coming out ahead in taxes/tribute/whatever in a region. But if you piss them off enough, good luck keeping them from nearly breaking even: modern tech has made it very cost-effective to make a desert and call it peace.)