Honestly, I've found a good Hunter squad to be incredible at keeping the early game of Rise from the Ashes + Grimdark pretty trivial. If you hire Loren, and send Kyle out too, they tend to generate around 50 rations on their own, which falls a bit as areas deplete. It's still plenty, though, and trivializes the early game as long as you keep your house lean (which, realistically speaking, is optimal since very few jobs will out generate their own cost of living on Dying Worlds early on) until you can save up for a Workshop. That said, I don't think I've ever had more than 100 people, so maybe I play quite differently.
Yeah we definitely have a different play style. I like to pick up every possible unqiue as soon as I can so I can get started on passive training. So I do run a large deficit for awhile since I don't have anything profitable for most of my people to do initially. Food in particular is an issue for me for around 2 months which is about the time frame for me usually to go get Zapin Field set up, at which time food cost drops to zero and prosperity from food donations goes way up.
I did try a game where I kept auto buy food off from day 1 on dying world while still sticking to my usual strategy of picking up as many people as possible as soon as possible. Hunters can't really keep up if you do that. I had about 15 hunters plus 2 gardens and still had to reduce rations so everyone was hungry (but not starving) constantly. I also grabed Mai Lynn early to make her my gardener. Both hunting grounds were perpetually at 0.
In my games Loren alone is enough to keep 1 of the 2 closest hunting grounds perpetually at zero. So you really only have enough hunting grounds for 2 full time hunters.
My focus in the early game pretty much goes like this:
Month 1:
- capture and sell as many non unique slaves as possible
- hire all the top tier mercs and buy MC duraplate and a level 1 health implant (I take stim allergy so this is very important)
- max out master bedroom, dojo, stables, and build a gazebo with a pool for pool parties
- capture and sell all the prowlers when I hit 6k influence and use the proceeds to build my first workshop
- complete the quest to make a vassal out of Fort Sera
- donate enough slaves to Aesir to make them a full vassal as well
- do your brother's quest so you can get Stacey's relic hunter job online
- make sure to pick up Rachel for the Golden Dragon job and Valerie to win those gymnastics competitions
- buy Aria, do her first quest, fuck her a few times to get her to Amiable and tell her you'll help with the rebellion
- Hire Clea
- training focus this month is mostly stamina with maybe a little melee and/or ranged training
- cycle all NPCs through guard duty to train melee/ranged to 80/80 and also cycle them all through educator training under soneone doing combat/physical training to get both physical stats and combat stats even higher
- put Clea on medical training duty to train up EVERYONE to 25+ medical skill so everyone who doesn't have a more important use for a title can be a nurse
- put Gregory on Intelligence training duty focused on cycling through all of my trainers first to get them to at least 90 intelligence (as well as Armand)
Month 2:
- fully max out the house upgrades so that maid and footman duty trains up workaholic and cycle all NPCs who don't start with workaholic through maid/footman duty until they have it (this takes several months)
- max out stamina completely on MC and train both melee and ranged to at least 120 (can go to 130 but I usually just crit my way past 120)
- pick up every pre-rebellion unique I don't have yet
- go get Zapin Field set up to get food sorted out
- finish wiping out the dockpunks so they stop messing up investment income
- start drinking at the Orient daily to boost science and academic skill to the training caps (50 science/80 academics)
- Make a trip up to the Mastersphere to pick up Milou and the better wrist computer
- go wipe out the bandits occupying Silfren mine, making sure to actually capture Dolcaar (he's a fantastic trainer)
- buy the sawmill as well for massive free wood production
- periodically sell stuff from the workshop in Hannah Bay to fund investments and build/upgrade workshops
- spend most workshop production on swords to donate to Aesir and Fort Sera til they've been boosted to decent levels of income
Month 3+:
- by now I have 4 workshops fully upgraded so it's time to start thinking about starting the rebellion
- keep capturing and donating slaves to fort sera until I have enough to satisfy the manpower requirement for the rebellion
- donate swords til I have enough power for the rebellion
- focus on training Aria as well as fighting with her constantly to get her fame to 500
- go get 2 Cyber Cannons
- buy MC a suit of Hulk armor as well as 2 more for my NPCs (more than that is prohibitively expensive on Dying World
- Clea has a free stealth suit so I only need to buy 1 more stealth suit for Aria
- go do the rebellion