Wait, you can hire 'em? Taverns? Soldier camps?
I thought all I need to do is have some fun times in portals?
Y you can hire characters! The ones from the Soldier camp (War camp where the king is) are 500 each and you get 250g back for each level you give them though they
are random, so not really something I use in the first days and characters from the tavern you can see in the attachment (Be careful what size they are!! The bigger they are the more food they eat = the more money they cost and they can't fit in all portals). And for the fun times in the portals, sadly that's only a part of the game. I usually don't bother with even entering portals in the first 5 days because I more often than not get obliterated after more than 1 fight.
And don't worry about one recruit spiking taxes to -1k, taxes get updated daily, so it counts your two starters + the recruit + food needed to be bought to feed them (which is usually pricey, but the brothel thingy should cover it)
EDIT: you also asked about genes, from what I understand they are a stat that shows you how a stat will grow with each lvl up. So if I have a Centaur with Str gene of 1 it will not grow by much. But a Centaur with Str gene 10 (which is the max you can get) will grow fast in that statistic! So that's why later on you want to breed two units that will give you a hybrid you want with the highest possible genes you can get