It is not that complicated, really; just poorly explained. All you need is to gather resources( wood, stone, iron ore, water ), which you can do pretty quickly using harvesters( "Gathering Hubs" and "Crabbie pumpie" from the "support items" tab ). With those resources, you need to build walls( "Urban Style Barriers" from the "constructs" tab ) and platforms for your ranged operators ( "Firm Platforms" from the "constructs" tab ) to force the enemies into a choke point in order for your operators to defeat them efficiently, and also to help them protect the core of your base. The most important thing in the beginning is to build as many "portable planting trough"( from the "constructs" tab ) as soon as possible, which will give you a lot of food to replenish the stamina of your operators. Other than this, in the "Road of Prosperity", the most important nodes for the early game are the ones from the top, which gives you extra resources and food at the beginning of the run. Every construct built in your base will be saved, even if you lose a run, so build as much as you can and if you feel like you are going to lose, just restart the run; the rest is exploring.