This is something I had to learn myself. Thanks to the Youtuber I'm quoting.

DO NOT OVERBUILD.

Let me explain.

Monitor your citizen's needs, and only grow plants and factories when they dip below 100% satisfied.
Grow by one or two factories at any time.

DO NOT BUILD MORE THAN NEEDED (Until Later, I'll explain that too.)

Another Quoted Youtuber, more of my own learning.

Build with 12x12 Road blocks, 10x10 inside the road block. 8 Houses in groups of two around the edge.

The 16 free tiles inside a housing block can be used for decoration.

Decoration being a necessary part of the city is new to me, I grew up with 2070.

I use a checkerboarded Eldritch Pack "Dreamspire" and a Steampunk Pack "Celestial Fountain"

Use your own imagination, create your own city's unique culture.

This is strictly Anno 1800 specific.

Limit yourself to exactly ONE Steelworks per island, regardless of the number of Iron deposits.

Yes, it will take longer to level higher rank houses.

But this limit frees up iron for other projects, Canned Goods and Weapons come to mind.

Simple way to save a little workforce for later.

Again, Anno 1800 Specific.

MAKE AND SELL SOAP
SPECIFICALLY TO WORMWAYS PRISON

Assuming you followed tip 1, and are with a positive balance, this will make you even more profits on top of a healthy budget.

You can even have a negative balance, and offset rather gruesome numbers with trade. The goal is NOT Deficeit spending, although it is possible to be trading enough to actually sustain a negative balance. Very scary when you're losing tens of thousands a minute.

The market price is 96, Wormways pays 300+, that workforce we saved from the NOT building iron can be put to work in an extra rending works or soap factory.

If you have Wormways turned off, I won't judge, but it's very lucrative business mid-late game.

Let's assume you have a +5000 coin surplus every minute.

You can take 2000 of that, and create a soap factory. Pigs, Rending, and All.

You can then export that soap to Wormways, and turn it into several thousand every few minutes.

Only when you're satisfied with how many houses are up, should you think in terms of "excess workforce." Use the excess workers you should be able to get by satisfying Lifestyle, and sink them into this Extra Soap. You will need farmers for the pigs, but rending and soap are workers.

One that is harder to pull off, but can sustain a 10000+ debt a minute is Care Packages.
You need to export them regularly to Archibald, or the NPC of your choice, but ONE care package is 8000 coins.

I was building a city prior to the game I'm playing now, and I didn't know Tip 1. I had to sustain a 18000+ debt a minute, and I did so with two islands regularly exporting 4 care packages every 3 minutes. Chocolate, Canned Goods, and Schnappes. The Last Two are easy, you figure out chocolate in regular amounts, you can almost forget about soap. You need to have unlocked airships to even think about this one, but it's THE higest value item one can make and sell at earlier levels.

"The Line"



You will be building 6 blocks of the 10x10 housing on either side of a marketplace.

As you see in the picture, the center column holds Tier 1 and 2 Public services, with a little imagination.

You can create a stamp of this village on your own, and really throw together a big city really quick.

You may have noticed my 3.5 Million Coins...

The ONLY THING I did differently, in the 120 hours I've sunk so far, is learn and apply Tip 1.

That's it, no fancy trading, no gimmicks, ONE soap ship so that doesn't count for much.

DO NOT OVERBUILD YOUR INDUSTRY.
MONITOR NEEDS AND BUILD ONLY WHEN NECESSARY.
BUILD BY ONLY ONE OR TWO PLANTS AT A TIME.

This picture is "The Line" again, with two "Village Stamps" one on top of the other.