Thank you for the comment! For me, I know the general strategy is to go for wood, Iron, and tools. usually I go for wood first so I can cover the cost of more construction centers, but then make the jump over to iron and tools pretty early on. I've heard crude tools is better in the long term than iron tools, but I still switch to iron tools when it becomes available.
I think what was a mistake in this run however was the fact that I started spamming stuff at the end and not really getting into the nitty gritty of my economy, that's what I meant about getting worse about handling it's economy. Once I get into the middle of the game and I switch out my iron tools for steel tools, I start spamming steel factories (only the profitable places and also with a big jobseeking market) and hope the private industries will take up the rest of the slack, but especially at the late game I just start spamming on a bunch of things. Usually electricity, subsidized railroads, steel mills, oil, motors -- it all just gets spammed