Hi,
I'm still new to these Steam guide thingies and I'll see if I'm not too lazy to finish this guide before the game even hits the release date. Since I've become a bit comfortable in getting pretty far in the game, I thought why not sharing some stuff and see what happens ?

As the game is still in a busy development phase, some of my findings and advice could become obsolete or inaccurate.
Hopefully this won't happen too soon or I'll slack off really fast >_>

EDIT 26/03/2022
Not sure the game is still in active development, almost a month without news of the game owner (maybe he's been conscripted ?).
I'm neither playing much since then so no motivation to expand the guide.

The game is turn-based and here is a collection of notes about that.

• At each turn, you will get a chance to place a zone/road, this is selected randomly
  
• There is no time-limit to your turn so take that time to assess your situation fully before making a decision
  
• The turn only ends when you hit the big yellow arrow button or hit [Space]
  
• You can always undo your actions during a turn with the other button next to the end turn button
  
• At the end of the turn, the game calculates if your decision has contributed to growth or if other active effects are affecting the end of the turn
  
• Resources usage will also be calculated at the end of the turn
  
• Your city growth bar goes down one point each turn if nothing gets built/zoned
  
• The game ends when the bar is depleted and your score will be calculated based on your total growth and turns survived
  
• Knowing this, in the end-game, try to combine negative effects at the same turn to mitigate the drop of growth (eg bulldoze a structure at the same time you expect another effect to be added at the end of your turn)

Here are the things I took note of to manage my growth bar and stay alive for more than 2000 turns.

• Growth point mechanics
  
  • The game will always remove a growth point at the end of your turn if there is nothing that would otherwise affect the growth positively
    
  • Your Growth bar will only move at most 1 point either up or down, effects are not cumulative, hence don't rushing it.
    
  • If you have a negative and a positive effect at the same turn, the growth will be counted as negative (? to be double-checked ?)
    
  • Knowing this, in the end-game, try to combine negative effects at the same turn to mitigate the drop of growth (eg bulldoze a structure at the same time you expect another effect to be added at the end of your turn)
• Neutral effects
  
  • Placing roads don't give growth points, so the growth will go down no matter what)
• Positive effects
  
  • Placing a field, forestry or mine will directly yield a point at the end of the turn if they can be built with resources available
    
  • Placing a field is one the cheapest way in terms of employment and resources required to get a city growth point
    
  • Residential homes will yield 2 city growth points: 1 once building starts/ is built (?) and one once people settle in.
    
  • Some structures don't yield points right away and require to have a structure fully built on it first
    
  • Most buildings take at least one or two turns to get built, that delay increases with higher tier structures
• Negative effects
  
  • Unemployed people leaving town
    
  • Homeless people leaving town
    
  • Unhappy people (aka starving) leaving town
    
  • Collapsed buildings (when they remained unoccupied for too long)

Things you should know about what you're dealing with from the start and how to proceed to build on a healthy fundation.

• A perfect square map
  
  • You always start in the exact middle of the map
    
  • The map is about 57x57 squares tall
    
  • The map is square except if a body of water is cutting through the edges
• Roads, Roads, Roads
  
  • In early the game, always, ALWAYS, place as much roads as possible towards unexplored areas to explore your map as fast as possible and develop your early houses along these roads
    
  • Roads are good for exploring and uncover 5 squares deep, so space your roads accordingly for efficient exploration
    
  • All roads should make a single circuit, if a piece gets disconnected, buildings over there will get in trouble or your didn't need the road to start with.
    
  • At the beginning, concentrate on exploring in straight lines from your starting point while maintaining development as balanced as possible until you unlock the resources view
    
  • Workers have no sense of distance, so you can make distance between homes and workplace as distant as you like as long as they're connected by the same network of roads
• Your first constructions
  
  • You start with a small set of resources (2.5k wood and 1.0k of crops)
    
  • The most important thing to keep in mind is to never rush placing a certain zone if there is not a very good reason to do so (see section about turns and growth points)
    
  • Early buildings will need wood, hence don't wait using your first reserve of wood to build at least one forestry to keep your budding city sustainable
• Locating your final city location
  
  • As soon as you have resources view (Objective 1), start to locate the best 30% of your map where you'll start to build your city center.
    
  • Most of the time I manage building the city center with residences, offices, shops and parks on an about 32x32 surface
    
  • Try also to think already where you'll build your undesirable industries, the more remotely located from you city center, the better for the higher objectives.
    
  • Personally I always try to get my city between the middle of the map and one of the corners of the maps, but sometimes the RNG screws it up and finds a way to get a lake or big resource tiles right in the middle of where I should start building.
    
  • I never place the city in the middle of the map because that would mean I'll have it probably surrounded on all sides with my various undesirable industrial activities
    
  • Cities should as much as possible be installed only on plains or mid lands
    
  • Avoid planning to build your city on or even near future mine resources as those tiles will give a negative area effect on desirability and will be unusable after they are depleted (but also no negative effect anymore).
    
  • Don't rush the second objective (dairy farms) as this will give you another building and thus less potential for a random road building turn. But it's fine if you get cornered to that, just try to stall growth as much as you can manage until you have explored enough and are certain of where you are going to plop the bulk of your city center.

Below is a mish-mash of remaining tips and findings, I'll give a more structured shape when I get my head around everything I've written in it.

• About resource tiles
  
  • Stone and coal resources blocks will be unusable once mined
    
  • Because the mines can get depleted, stone and coal reserves are the only non-renewable resources on your map, so don't go sell them.
    
  • Farm tiles develop depending on following conditions: on plain, next to water, very low ground. If none of those conditions are met you will get an orchard.
    
  • Farm tiles have 4 development types: dark green, light green, yellow and orchard with following respective yields per square: 48,36,24,24). This means placing a field tile on a plain does not guarantee maximum yield !!
    
  • Maximize your farm yield by only placing them on plains + near water bodies
    
  • There is always a 2 square wide strip of wet/low plains all around the edges of the map, optimize their usage for fields !
    
  • Forestries built on high Lands in the resource map yield 14 wood each turn, 10 on Mid Lands and on Plains it even falls to 8 and that makes sense because WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU BUILDING IT THERE AFTER READING MY NOTES ON FIELDS ??
    
  • fields, forestries and mines don't need roads adjacent, so remove them to squeeze out anything in the ground except if you need to keep a building connected
• Other
  
  • You can earn money through office buildings
    
  • Seaports can also yield some money if you sell your resources there
    
  • You can only sell/buy as many batches of resources at a seaport as there are workers available for it
    
  • Seaports make for a good reserve of spare workers if you are not selling/buying much resources, use the worker slider when needed to manage employment demand

Yeah, this guide sucks.
But if you want, tell me what you want to see included here or if you have spotted some inaccuracies, that's a trigger for me most of the time :)

• 12/02/2022
  
  • Added notes on residential appeal
• 13/02/2022
  
  • Removed obsolete appeal related notes after today's update u_u
    
  • Added new notes on global appeal

Apart from the obvious need to reach city objectives to have more building options at your disposal, here are some findings about how to ensure you provide your citizens with optimal surroundings.

• Residential needs
  
  • Residences will start consuming food, and there are 3 people living in a 2-square t1 house
    
  • Each person consumes 12 food per turn
    
  • Higher tier residents will also require dairy products and processed foods
    
  • If residents needs of a certain tier are not fulfilled, they will become unhappy and if this lasts, they'll leave.
    
  • Residents need jobs, if you don't provide new job opening they will become unemployed and then eventually leave.
    
  • At the moment I think it takes about 5-6 turns between the start of the reason of the dissatisfaction and the moment a resident leaves.
    
  • You need only one-square parks to have residential appeal to rise to the level to attract tier 3 residential buildings (dark green)
    
  • Similarly, only 2x2 square parks create an AoE to create appeal for tier 4 residential buildings
    
  • 4x1-square parks have not the same effect as the single-block one. So to benefit from the most optimal effect, bulldoze and rebuild your 2x2 park in one single turn as soon as you get the chance.
• Global Appeal
  
  • Appeal is measured by 3 factors, Residential effect, commercial and park.
    
  • Residential effect depends on Surrounding residential and Office buildings minus industrial (negative) effects
    
  • Appeal is measured on a score of 0 to 360
    
  • Global appeal is calculated based on the lowest of the 3 effects, this means you can't have high appeal with a great 2x2 park if there is poor commercial effect around (e.g. none or only 1x1 commerce around).
    
  • Most building effect don't go much further than 2 squares around the building, or at least not with sufficient intensity
    
  • When a building is under construction, its appeal around drops before getting back to normal
    
  • 2 Commercial buildings of 1x1 size don't give off enough appeal to provide the minimum for the first residential upgrade, prefer to build a 1x2 building at once that will give about 75 appeal points.
    
  • Office buildings need an appeal of 100 before upgrading to their second tier, that can probably not be reached due to your low commercial effect, which means expanding those to 2x2 zones