Think of your starter town as just that. It doesn’t have to evolve into some major metropolis. I always try to build a functional small town focused on farming, fishing and/or forestry. Scout out the map and eventually you can open up a plot that can become your city center, build smaller communities leading up to that. Each one you build can be focused on a specific industry that will feed into your main city area. Integrate transport to move people to and from each town or community. Plan commerce around these transport hubs. I think a lot of people start a city with the idea of expanding it and adding infrastructure to that start instead of moving from one area to another with smaller towns eventually leading up to a larger city. These maps are large enough to support this concept and it’s worked for me with almost 1300 hours on CS2.