How do you start with the Poachers?

[Nurgus]

With 1500 gold and a Fur to sell, we start around 1850-1900 gold.
Do you invest into some meatshields/spears/shields and go for early thugs or do you go for the travel advantage and look for trades/cargo missions to build a higher stock of gold?
Its great to have 3 ranged guys for lategame but early ranged is not the strongest.
The damage of the shortbow/slingshot is not enough for raiders, crossbows are better in that situation. Once able to deal with the early raiders the game becomes easier ofcourse.
How do you manage to cope with that early disadvantage to transition into a successful mid/lategame?
What am i ignoring, not aware of that?

[MattE/Bierbaron]

I think the only difference in terms of human resources to the standard group is the time saving in searching for good archers. So I would go for the meatshields, and the standard pitchfork backline.

[madracc00n]

I just use 3 or 4 spear bros early so i can get couple of lvls on archers,then it becomes much easier,since ur archers are beasts with 2 stars u can also pick fast adaptation on ur acrhesrs to help with hitting enemies and reducing rng missing streaks.

[LDiCesare]

I agree, go for meatshields, but pitchforks? You already have 3 guys in the second line I would try to pick 5 front-liners with spears first (to repel and because they will have bad matk). By the time I try to get a 9th guy, I hope I have better pole arms than pitchforks.

[Tuidjy]

I just get a few spear/shield guys to hold the line while the archers work their magic. If money is tight, and it was in both my tries, I make one of the archers a spearman. His sling staff does not do much for me.

It's one of the nicer starts, in my opinion. Very minor disadvantage, decent starting characters, and very nice scouting. The movement speed increase is also good in theory... but for some reason, it does not seem all that impressive in practice.

Just make sure you do not fight at night.

[Avey]

It's not possible on every map but my tatic is to find early fights in swamp, even with locations. With the archers it's pretty easy and you can grab very good loot early on. I got a named mace in less than 10 days with that

[Noogywoogy]

I'm on day 240(?) now, just ended my second crisis on beginner ironman difficulty.
I started by buying three front liners and equipping with them the best shields and armor I could buy. I think it was a farmer, a lumberjack and a miller, but the miller is still with me and is my 2nd best tank at the moment.
I kept my archers in the backline and didn't change their weapons until I looted better stuff. For the first 150 days or so my strategy was always just have shields in front and unload from behind.
This strategy worked perfectly. I only hired new people if I had decent armor to give them.

After I got to 12, for the longest while I had 7 shields and 5 archers (2 xbows), but now I have 18 guys so I keep rotating.
The ability to see what you're fighting is a godsend. I ran from anything that looked like it would give me trouble.

[SaurianDruid]

On day 40 right now.

I also went with grabbing a couple meatshields early on. That hunter can do quite a bit of DPS for an early level archer. The shortbow can also do some work, and the sling occasionally is good for the daze effect and can do surprising damage on a lucky headshot.

Replaced the sling with a shortbow eventually. Wasn't hard to get one fighting thugs. Though I am making that poacher into a throwing specialist, so I went back to the sling just so he has something to do when the enemy is far away.

Now I have a pretty solid lineup. A few frontline bros I'll try to keep alive and a strong backline made of dedicated archers, throwers, and hybrids. Most fights 2-3 enemies are dead before they even touch my lines.

It is pretty great. Bonus points because my hunter started with Bright and I think a max ranged attack roll, one poacher had Iron Lungs and Nightowl making him a deadly night time sniper, and the last had Lucky and Survivor.

Actual map leaves a lot to be desired though. The noble house I was poaching from dominates almost 2/3rd of the map. Makes for an interesting start at least.

[suejak]

I just randomly rolled this origin because we were having a conversation about the more effeminate backgrounds in Discord (servants, eunuchs, tailors). I hired a bunch of these jobbers out of curiosity but did not intend to play it out... before I randomly had a level 4 barb join me with 3* mdef, 2* resolve, and 2* 118 starting init, making him a living breathing Dodge/Relentless perma-Adrenaline meme machine. TBH he's a cruel falchion double-grip riposte guy right now, but we'll see...

Anyway, none of this has anything to do with what you asked, but I think the best way to take advantage of the 3 god archers is to give them Fast Adaptation (at least the poachers) @ level 2 and a huge wall of shield frontliners. Can't go wrong with alternating spears and "other stuff" (e.g. flails, swords, maces).

The logic here behind the shieldwall is probably obvious, but the reason you get FA is because 1) FA hunting bows / throwers are very good early game, and 2) FA is still good later vs. goblins and barbs unless you want to go xbows. Basically, you spam Quick Shot. Hard to screw up.

[sikker]

I'm 50 days in and still haven't hired anyone, though I did get a barbarian for free. He holds the melee line with a poacher who is a throw/melee hybrid for now, but will eventually switch to pure archer.

Obviously 2 melee and 2 ranged is not enough to win battles, but with the extra speed you can safely lure anyone into a town and fight with allies. I haven't fought a single battle on my own. 1 skull caravan escorts are also much better with this background since you can hide behind the caravan hands and even donkeys while shooting the enemies. The powerful ranged damage allows you to snatch many kills from allies, I even managed to kill a brigand leader and take his greatsword.

Now I might finally have to hire someone because my package got stolen and I have to fight 'some brigand thugs' on my own. If it's just 4 of them I shouldn't need anyone but if there are 6 they can probably get past my 2 melee guys.

[Darth Cannabis]

If starting income is a problem for you, i suggest the seed Poacher420.

The starting spot, is kinda in the middle of nowhere but... it is directly north of golden goose.

Have yet to explore the rest on that one, but what a way to start.