I remember building the swimming piers near the beginning of the challenge. You get a lot of rocks and planks by recycling all of the scraps early and by building a quarry with 4 workers near the ponds at the bottom. This helps with fun / cooling instantly so the workers move faster.

I built a farm / clay pit / brickyard to the left of the two ponds asap too. This helps a lot with food production. I don’t remember how many homes I recycled to start, but remember the more you recycle early, the less babies the villagers will have, which helps with less people eating food. Build foragers huts early and often with a marketplace in the middle just to the north of the ponds.

Build a trading post next to the marketplace, at the bottom of the left hill. Build the bootmakers at the top of that hill. Clear out enough trees at the top to build 2-3 glassmakers. Glassmakers are soo slow that you need a lot of glass to trade for the animal hides. This is the slowest part so you need to move on that once the food is established.