Perfect game to play for a few hours. Start a new game, play for a few hours or more after you try what you have learned... and then find a good starter map and give it your best. If you don't give it a few test goes first, you most likely will experience terrible later game growth pains.

- Demands: Pursue them diligently to support new industrial/demand growth (Letting some bankrupt is ok, but they do not respawn a new request of that type in that city very quickly if ever again so every reasonable opportunity to secure that sale/supply is money in pocket now and for the future. It may not come again til much later, if ever. HOWEVER, some you will need to let go for whatever strategic reason. If so, let it go.. just let it go :)
- Raw Resource Demands: I don't know for sure. For a town to stimulate growth, supplying logs and other raw resources seems to help growth BUT can become increasingly difficult to supply to them OR have a comparatively high return rate on profit. Later game, it may be better to not supply some of those so that you can convert those resources into higher dollar products to sell elsewhere. (still makes sense to stimulate early town growth)..
- Passenger: Release .85. Seems to be the core benefit of passengers.. Stimulating growth. Do not see it being otherwise profitable so I rarely run them. If I do, it is just for fun or to help a town grow. (Others may have better ideas)
- Tech: In concert with meeting demands as they crop up, it is a good idea to pursue level II infrastructure advances soon like Advanced Rails, Roads, Warehouse so that you will place less Tier I asset you will want to replace later. That is costly AND causes disruptions.
- Debt can be your Friend: Don't be afraid to go into debt and carry a debt while you establish yourself. Once you find the right formula for you, you will find it will aid you greatly. Respect and Manage debt. Don't be afraid of it.
- Build up a Good Cash Reserve: When starting any rework of infrastructure or when under major expansion always keep a large cash reserve. I can and will run into cost overruns. Nothing like realizing you are broke and you actually broke a major road (money earning route).
- Bandwidth. Common mistakes I see and have made is using a single conveyor or warehouse to supply raw materials for an industry. This can cause a bottleneck resulting and the supply of many resources but a slow moving manufacturing output. Account for this as in later game it is not so easy to correct this. Nothing like having a huge industrial complex, lots of raw resources, but STILL, low output volumes
- Limit city growth. So, you have this idea how you are going to lay things out only later to have to bulldoze new building as a city popped up. Very expensive and can throw off some of the best laid plans. Mods, or other methods (rails, decorations, etc) can be used to limit or stop growth into certain areas or all together.
- Distributed rather than central planning: All I can say is..."Unless you love grid lock"..
ex: More than one station to pick up a product. Causes a bandwidth issue otherwise. More pickup spots, shorter lines. Making all your vehicles come to one central area is inviting a huge problem.
- Train Stations: Using staging yards, or train yards just prior to the station will help hold waiting trains off of the main line. If you do not do this, you do run the risk at some point, having a waiting train(s) extend off of your branch line and block the main lines traffic.
- Trains... In my purely subjective opinion are best pursued as late as you feel you can safely hold off. For me, I use them almost extensively as transport to my factories. They directly earn no cash. I also set them to not report when they have no income for 30 days. I will set up a dedicated incoming rail yard and station for an industry, for instance, logs. I will set them to Full offload. Due to the size of my station and yards, I just add trains til I always have at least one always waiting to unload into multiple warehouses.
- Multiple warehouses at the drop off station. With level two warehouses you can offload more as well as faster (Bandwidth) It allows you to store spare product in the event of a train break down, Can truck it if you have a road station, AND, most importantly, sets the stage for the good initial bandwidth into your industries allowing you to effective over supply multiple factory lines.
- Conveyors. They are great and quite handy. The game even allows you to exploit conveyors so you can run very long lines. You can. I did and still do (in my home territory only). But, I will say that you will see their limits.
- Mods. IMO, must haves. "Trucks with trailers" and its required additional supporting mod, "Universal Vehicle Patch", as well as Visual mods to change the "Biome colors", "Dropper mod", "City growth boundary", and "better vehicle capacity display". There are other great mods, but I feel, for now, these are critical to my game play while the others are more like DLC.
- Critical demands. Don't be afraid to sacrifice something in the short term for long term benefit. For instance, you may have a demand ready to go bankrupt but you do not have enough cash to buy vehicles to support it in time. IE: Temporarily routing trucks/supplies meant for an established demand to KEEP the other from going bankrupt can be a great move. The old demand will not go bankrupt, it will simply be under supplied and will not be a huge concern unless you leave it that way long term. You can always reassign those trucks later or new trucks. I sometimes will use this method in conjunction with replacing trucks with newer models while I work through this temporary logistical move.
- VIEWS... Using F9 and F10 to get that large map overview is great. AND SLOW. Remember to mouse wheel to zoom out that view FIRST. then the keys to get the location/view you are looking for. HERE is the thing. Once you get that view set, you can set the KEY FRAME. If you do, when you F9/F10 then mouse wheel out, then click that saved KEY FRAME, you will return quickly to that exact same view. I suggest taking a screen capture and making an image you can pull up in an image viewer to review quickly while in-game
- And for fun.. and more.. Take a random ride in that truck or train. Chances are You will find that you may see some things that need correcting... It may not even be with that vehicle. You may notice a problem with that vehicle or even elsewhere you may not be able to see so well any other way. For example, trucks stacking up on a steep hill that you could level out some to help flow better.
-While riding a train or truck in first person mode, you can still place assets.. I have used it to place trees along my route as well as for placing signals in train tunnels.
** important also