So when you start the main campaign, you find the initial plot is basically everyone running around like chickens with their heads cut off due to a lack of coal. However, did you know the coal supply available to you in the first main chapter can actually last over three decades -- or even longer if you're an even more hardcore min-maxer than I. This allows you to basically max out the tech tree and upgrade everything before progressing the storyline in any meaningful way, making the entire game a breeze.

Here's how to do it:

Frostland. Since Frostpunk 1 was a city-builder, your first instinct is probably to focus on making the city stable and self-sufficient (within reason) before turning your attention to the global Frostland map. This is a mistake. Explore early and often. There are free deposits of resources all over the world map which provide a massive boost in the early game.

On the western edge of the map, the Frozen Ocean has a 100k coal deposit, and directly below that in The Graveyard there a 50k coal deposit. Also, the Frostland areas immediately adjacent to your city, to the north and southwest have coal mines.

Heating hubs burn materials -- and not fuel. Since fuel is pretty scarce in the early game, you can massively extend your fuel supply using these. Especially since you have access to millions of units of materials even in the early game. They can also stack; you can have multiple heating hubs affecting one district. Just remember that heat can never go into the positives for any building, and therefore any extra heat is just wasted. So toggle them off during warm weather if you don't need them to save materials.

Charcoal Plant is a building that lets your materials extractors produce coal (but only if the materials deposit is not depleted). So if you rely on Frostland sites as much as possible until you've build charcoal plants on your city deposits, you can get the most coal out of them.

Hidden Rubberband Events. Many laws and building unlocks have a hidden event that makes them even more powerful (but adds other penalties) if the relevant city problem is too bad for too long. Where that's relevant here is:

• Community Service Law: Heatpipe Watch. This normally provides 20 heating to each building. But if your citizens remain cold for long enough (easily achieved with a housing shortage), this increases to 40 heating at the cost of a few kids.
  
• Building: Dense Housing. You can get an upgrade that increases the capacity from 25 to 33, if lack of housing remains an issue for too long. Which means fewer housing districts, and therefore lower heat needed by the city.

Homelessness is Necessary. Currently, there's no way to stop population from spiralling out of control while keeping the city stable -- except keeping homelessness high enough. Do not attempt to keep your entire population housed otherwise you'll end up with a massive overpopulation problem eating into your limited resources.

Toggle Overdrive all the time. Unlike the first game, overdrive doesn't simply increase the heat. It makes the generator run more fuel-efficiently. So basically you want to keep overdrive on for as much of the game as possible, save or breaks for it to cool down in-between. It's free fuel savings!

Using the above plus going all-in with Adaptive buildings and laws (which usually have far lower upkeep than Progress buildings and laws) let me reach the 1930s in-game. Which it goes without saying was enough time to research everything, stockpile everything, and basically had a perfect city before even finishing the first major plot incident. Which makes the rest a breeze, and makes achievement hunting much easier.

P.S. This guide may eventually become obsolete due to future balancing patches. Enjoy while you can.