Start with a coastal map. Lake, Island, Cliff, set to zero, the others at say 50%. Bridges do work, but not reliably. You want coast with a good bit of beach for fishing. Select Classic Mode; then either Relax and Play or Prestigious Burg. Note: if you choose the latter you must never build a Monastery or Castle. Just leave those research trees alone once you access them in the progression screen.

Your initial territory should be next to (not on) the ocean, next to (not on) a nice piece of thick forest, and if possible near a mining outcrop, though the first two are more important.

Play with the tutorial enabled, as it is now quite good. Read the prompts carefully and follow their instructions. The only thing I would really add here is to assign only 2 villagers to each task at first, as they become available; 2 builders, 2 berries, 2 woodcutters and 2 miners, the last 2 of the initial 10 are your first market tender and a forester.

When you open the Common Path screen, pick up the storehouses, the fish and the fence decoration. Northbury buys planks and polished stone and this is how we will start our ascent to riches on the backs of the toiling serf masses. Northbury also sells tools, but with reasonable care you shouldn't need to buy any for a while, and there are also events early that give you more tools.

For your second territory, save the game, then buy the thick forest. Acquire the hunting choice from level 2 of the common path. Check your forest for boar using the hunting option in the painting option. You are looking for around 25 boar or more in that territory and an adjacent one. If there are insufficient boar, search for a better forest, reload and choose that.

Next, open the common path screen and choose the clothing option, the polished stone option, and the edict option. This should leave you with about 60 wealth. Go to the edict screen and take the tools edict option (the game later suggests you do this, but why waste tools meanwhile?)

Now, using the fence decoration you chose earlier, build a fence all around your hunting territory. This will stop the boars running away (the devs are going to fix hunting, but the fence works for now). Once that's complete, paint hunting around the perimeter of the hunting area. This will encourage the boars to migrate towards the centre of the area. You can paint in a bit more hunting later if your hunters can't find boar in the perimeter area. Hunting should stabilise fairly quickly, and be good indefinitely. Place 1 hunter in each of 2 camps and a butcher. Start selling meat to the serfs.

The hunting area. If the hunters are inactive, move in the border a bit until they start working again

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3443648525

Build and staff 2 stone mason buildings. You won't be needing much polished stone for now, but Northbury wants it and is willing to pay 3 per stone. It's one of the best bargains (of an admittedly terrible selection) in the game; go for it.

The other thing you need to do is to get trade going with Myddle. This is because the early upgrades for the Northbury trade route need bread and you won't be making any for a while. Profit from your existing trade until you feel comfortable with your cash balance, then build 2 sheep farms with 1 shepherd each, 2 weavers, and a tailor (you can cheese this by just doing the tailor and buying 20 cloth from Northbury but common clothing is also a trade item you can make money from).

Myddle also buys fish, so for your 3rd territory take a piece of coastline and place some fishing spots. Open trade with Myddle for, say, over 50 fish.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3443648798

Build another food stall for fish, and add a rustic church.

Last but not least, start a 'manor' with a tax office (you only need one tax guy for now, a small manor tower major will do) and tax the serfs at 3%. Of course, you will be building your real manor, the with the 3 wings and 5 stories etc. - the one you will live in - later on.

Give or take a berry hut and more stone miners, this small village will be stable up to about 200 pop, will keep the serfs happy forever - just as well, because you will never be promoting a single one of them - and will always turn a profit.

When everything is running smoothly, add a tiny 'great hall' to your manor. This will give you the last tutorial messages. When you want to build a proper manor, you can destroy the tiny hall, but make sure you've clicked the part, you don't want to knock down the whole manor!

After adding light fortification, your village should end up looking something like this:

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3443647779

Still 5 tools left!

These matter because an oddity of Foundation is that while decorations generally add to 'beautification' and a small amount to prosperity, if attached to a monument, they add prestige to the faction of that monument. As you will be making more cash than you can easily store, just buy 'labour' decorations with the surplus (click the building, click Common Decorations (or freebuild, common decorations, if necessary) check the icons have the little green star); and ironically the cheapest (5 gold) options are also the best value. Shift-click and you can stack dozens of them in the same spot.

In this way you can easily access higher parts of the Labour tree, notably light and heavy fortification, and the bailiff, who can start hunting for those sweet, sweet gold and marble deposits (Northbury buys gold, and Myddle buys marble).

The other thing you want to get early is the stone mason upgrade (more masons=more gold).

Fortification is important because it upgrades your houses to hold more people. To work, the fortification wall needs to surround an area completely, with no gaps apart from fortification gates. When you nearly complete planning the wall, blue stripes will appear to confirm that it will work, once built.

The quality of a house is irrelevant to its density; all you need is light (or heavy) fortification and patrols, which can be of serf patrollers, each group of which operates from a separate 'mini-manor' - start with selecting a new 'manor' in the build menu then use a tower as a 'watchpost'. 2 or 3 patrollers in each of 2 such buildings should police a decent sized village with ease.

By now you may be running out of tools, or having to buy them at the market price. The secret of the iron ore-smelting-blacksmith cycle is to buy in the charcoal, which Myddle sells, and sell surplus tools back to them. 2 mines, 2 smelters and a blacksmith should be sufficient. I've also found common wares a good money spinner, but only with the tier 5 upgrade.

Another secret of the game is not to waste time with cheese production. Your serf village doesn't need cheese, and in fact not one morsel will ever pass their lips because there is no cheese stall, but eventually when you want to build your actual town far from the sweating masses, on a nicer site, with commoners, citizens, a market hall and belfry etc. you will want to have it.

Fortunately the Abbess sells cheese at a discount sometimes, so you can fill your boots with cheese on the cheap. In fact you'll probably find it doesn't matter; late game you will be making so much money that you won't be able to build treasuries fast enough to hold it all; in my last game I had coal and cheese imports set at 700 each, not even noticing the cost.

Like all good city builders (does anyone remember the *?#% Herbalist from ROTK?) Foundation has many, many idiosyncrasies.

Just a few to start with:

If you amend a building during construction, it can sometimes get 'stuck' and not finish. Best to let it finish first, then change it. A particular problem with statues for some reason.

If you want to move a building, there are rules. Generally, any single-piece building can be moved by clicking in the centre of the placement circle. However, buildings with more than one piece require care. Clicking the first time usually selects just the one part; you may need to click twice to get all of the building. If you get the 'too far' warning, it probably means you have accidentally left something behind, but when you move that part close again, it should work fine. And I haven't been able to move entire monuments, though parts of a monument e.g. a cloister, can be moved collectively.

Fortifications can take ages to upgrade, even with small changes - during which time your buildings devolve. Change fortifications - even small changes - only when all your builders are free.

Never, ever, open your doors to travellers or pilgrims. They will eat you out of house and home in no time. Only open these facilities when completing a quest. Make sure that 'paused' is checked on the building and also in the building outliner, to make sure no freebooters steal your stuff.

A bridge built into even a gradual slope can be unusable. Don't ask me why, just build them between flat areas. Expect your people still to complain though.

Ah, complaints. Your people will complain even though an alternative route is available, and they immediately use it. But don't ignore all complaints. If a person complains a couple of times in a row, check to see if they can do what they need to, i.e. get back to work. if not, check their building for problems, probably with access.

Warehouses can be tricky if built too close to other buildings, so leave a bit of space around them. As a guideline you can use a small gate's width all around.

An extended granary e.g. for cheese, will not fill up all 800 slots, only 400. again, don't ask me why. In general I'd rather build 2 regular granaries than 1 extended one. You only need 1 staff in each if you only have one item to deliver.

Your people are not good at delivering from one warehouse to another. You can force them to do it by using the empty all command in one and the collect all command in the other. To see if it works, right click on the resource icon in the top centre box, and you can watch what happens. If it doesn't work, check for access problems.

If building a 5 person wheat farm, always use the extra storage barn, or some wheat will be unharvested.

If building a monastery, always go ape with apiaries, and don't whine about wine - the Bishop will sell you the barrels for manuscripts. But never buy the stained-glass window - your people won't use it.

Never make iron swords for sale. Shortbows and spears sell for the same.

Finally, some statistics from my last game (common/labour items only) to give a sense of the relative proportions of each building required. If you find you are are using much more of some building then there is likely a problem with some of that type of building:

Pop 450 (net)
Wealth 18k
Tax 3% 2k

Selling (quantity):
Berries 270
Common Clothes 38
Fish 240
Hops 260 (a reliable cash crop)
Polished Stone 71 (with heavy use as well)

No longer selling (no room in treasury)
Gold ore
Marble
Planks
Bread
etc.

Buying (quantity):
Boar 58
Cheese 550
Coal 268

Buildings
Bakery 2
Berry Brewery 1 (4 workers)
Blacksmith 2
Brewer 3
Builders 3 (with attachments)
Butchery 3
City Food Stall 6
City Goods Stall 3
City Luxury Stall 3
Common Wares (upgraded) 2
Fishing Huts 10
Food Stall 3
Forester Camp 3
Gathering Hut 5
Gold Quarry 2
Goods Stall 1
Granary 7 (some single purpose e.g cheese)
Hop Farm 2
Hunters Hut 4
Iron Quarry 6
iron Smelter 5
Lumber Camp 4
Marble Quarry 2
Market Hall 2 (3 transporter each)
Market Storehouse 2 (3 transporter each)
Paviour 3
Rustic Church 1 (also a large church for the city, 6 priests)
Sawmill 4
Service Counter 3 (1 Taverner each)
Sheep Farm 2 (2 workers each)
Stone Quarry 3
Stone Mason Hut 2 (upgraded)
Tax Office 2
Tavern Kitchen 1 (1 cook)
Warehouse 10 (some single purpose e.g. coal)
Weaver Hut 2
Wheat Farm 7 (all upgraded to 5 workers)
Windmill 3