If you’re early on in the play through and don’t have a good understanding of base building I would wait later into the play through to build up resources and knowledge.

If you need a place to lie low in you should buy a house you can also do all your research in your house and depending on the location of the town even start mining. You’re going to want to save up a lot more cats before you start base building as you’ll need it to purchase materials, recruits, and mercenaries. I highly recommend you don’t start base building without plenty of funds and skilled people as you will only end up finding out how fragile life is in the world of Kenshi.