-For setting up roads a lot of people recommended that you don't stick to a grid specific layout. It would look very boring if you only had squares and rectangles as a city layout. There are many different designs/ideas you can make, here is the start of one city I am working on (for the purpose of this guide) I chose a simple layout. Here are some examples.
1.

2.

I am not very good at building roads as you will be able to see soon. But I have found a hopefully helpful video you can watch to try to get better moving traffic.
I will point out a few tips though.


As you can see here I have put a road over the highway to sort traffic a little better. It doesn't workout because the rest of my city isnt that well organized with traffic flow. But hopefully you can get the idea...

That you need to seperate flow of traffic into different directions. Once you start to do that it should help. Try to make it so there is more than one way to cross a highway, more than one way to go across the city or to different areas.

A little like my entrance to the city. I put a couple of ways to get around it.

Anyways here is the video. I hope it helps!

-For power supply I recommend starting with windmills but it really depends. If you have a good wind in your area you can try them. If you have a decent ammount of resources you can make a coal power plant. (Both are good for starting off.)

1. (Windmill) Costs: 6,000$ Power: 1-8 MW Noise Pollution: 75

2. (Coal Plant) Costs: 19,000$ Power: 40 MW Pollution: 50 Noise Pollution: 50

-For a more advanced / In-depth setup of power I recommend placing your power source(s) in a convenient place. Later in your game you might occur a lack of power (or need to upgrade). From there I put a section for power to be created as a central spot. (This is just what I did on one of my more successful worlds. You don't have to follow everything this is just a idea to give everyone.)

How it works is something like this:

As you can see here, there is a power source that spreads from building to building. But if the area does not have enough buildings, the power will not travel leaving buildings without power.
(The electricity is placed and has a set area of which power can travel. from there, it can be moved through houses / buildings or power lines.)

Here is an example of a central location of power. (They're incineration plants, which is even better because it solves your garbage problem and also can power your city!)

1.) Incineration Plants: Costs: 30,000$ Power Production: Up to 12MW Capacity: 400,000 Process Per Week: 48,000.

-For Water and Sewage I will look at the water flow and put the water pumps at the edge of your area where the water flows past them. and I will put the Sewage at the end of the path so the garbage/contaminated water doesn't interfear with the clean water you want to supply your town with.

1. Water setup (Water Pumping Station) Costs: 2,500$

2. Sewage setup (Water Drain Pipe) Costs: 2,500$

3. A starting layout

Taxes are an important part of keeping your city from being in debt. to begin with I usually keep the taxes at 9%. You can always raise it and lower it, but don't go to high!
1.

For the budget It really depends on how much money you are making, and how much of an excess of things you have. If your crime rate or health is really high for example. you may lower it a little for the time being if you're short on cash. Same goes for power and Utilitys, You want a balance though. It isnt very good to have a lot of Coal plants and lower your power cost to say 75% for a small village of a few hundred. Yes you aren't paying as much for the power so its not too much power, but its also costing a lot for the several power plants. So it better to be at 100% and only have as many plants etc. as you need. (Play with theses as you wish.)

2.

-For Placing structures in your world I recommend placing them when you need them but also to have all of the area's covered so citizens don't complain about not having services etc.

-All services you place have a range, which means that they can only be available from a certain distance away to the actual building.

Here is an example of what to do:

Here is an example of what not do:

-How this works is after you unlock structures (like fire department, police services etc.) citizens will want those services near them and you will have to place them so they are happy; and have a quick responce time if per se a fire at the house or a person died.
Houses in orange to red colors are in need of the specified structure, where greyish green somewhat need, and bright blue to turquoise don't have a urge for the services right away. (either there is one nearby or they are outdated and will update/are happy already.)


Problem solving:

-Always make sure your building has a road that is connection to the rest of the roads. It doesnt help when your landfill or Police station is stranded in the middle of nowhere with no connection road to dispatch its units and vehicles.

-If you think your service is too far away try clicking on it and looking at the green area that it can be available and if its not in a good position to help lots of people or collect garbage etc. move it!

-If your building is black, that might mean your building does not have any workers and cannot function. (In the Cities Skylines wiki, it shows that you might not need any workers to run a service. So try checking out the wiki here.[www.skylineswiki.com])

One of the most useful things I found out while playing is there is a way to expand your grid to build on! It took me a long time to finally find out how to do this and I would've liked to have known before, so I am going to show you how!

-You are going to need a population of 900 or more.

After that go to the little earth picture on the bottom left and click on it.

It should show up your square and connection squares besides it, for a certain price you can unlock those squares and expand your city on them!

I hope this helped!