Had no idea the food economy could be that lucrative. Interesting. Might have to give that a try. Early game it's nice to have low salaries if it doesn't reduce your income. I suspect it won't work as well for my play style though since I like to pick up all of the unique slaves as early as possible, and slaves have this nasty habit of insisting on eating every day... I definitely notice the food cost when I have auto buy turned on for 80 people at $10-20 per ration. I really should build gardens early on instead of just leaving those slots empty til I'm ready to build whatever I want in that slot for the end game. I can always pave over that garden later and put a dojo/stables/workshop/etc on it later.Early non-violent, Grimdark dying world, start typically looks like this:
First two weeks
Hunting twice per day: ~80 food
Sell the food for $10-20 each =~$1200 per day.
Train stamina every evening after hunting.
Put Kyle as gardener and build small garden + 3 big gardens for additional 59 food per day and a total investment of ~15k.
You now have a daily income of ~$2k and ~50 stamina.
Next three weeks
Buy May-Lynn if you have access to Crystal Heights.
Keep training stamina.
You now have a daily income of ~$3k and ~90 stamina.
Next few weeks - get rich
Buy a workshop for $35k + 2 x $10k upgrades, for a total of $55k and staff with whatever lazy dimwit numbnuts you can find and put Doyle as foreman, and let them produce rifles to be sold at Hamah bay.
Start training strength or melee.
You now have a passive income of around $5k from gardens and workshop.
Re-invest the income towards further workshop upgrades.
Even with lazy idiot slave labor you will produce a passive income above $10k.
You can optionally improve the workforce to significantly increase that income.
At this point you are strong enough to give Lovisa a fair fight and you can pretty much focus on anything you want, such as for example picking up Ayden, Einar and some other mercenaries to start ruling the outside world.