I have to manually buy every single vehicle? Why are there so many steps to setting up something as simple as a bus line? What the fuck do railway semaphores even do, and why at no point does the tutorial explain when to use which type? Why don't my airports come with places to park my planes, I have to buy them manually? Oh god there's voltage and wattage and different voltage wires and how do I know when to use which and make sure everything has the right amount of power the tutorial never explained that-
On one hand, I want to get into this game, but on the other, it seems like I'm going to constantly have my economy crash and fail and have to start over because I forgot the one obscure step in dozens to set up even the most basic of industries.
Easy starting industry is tourism, you can build it in residential areas and its easy to expand as all you have to do is just build another building, build a residential area that has all the amenities, that is water, heat, sewers, electricity, kindergarden, primary school, grocery store, electronics store, entertainment, sport, hospital, then build a hotel nearby in a place that has good score (close to water or trees or in mountains) and some way for the tourists to get to the hotel, for example a railway to the border, then populate partially the residential area so that all the jobs necessery to keep the population happy are running and some of them are working in the hotel, this way you should already make a profit.
Wait while population increases and you gather capital, next industry you can build is either coal extraction or oil extraction, build it away from residential areas as they will create pollution which will decrease the life expectancy of your pops. Build a railway station for pops and one for the resource, use the railway to get the pops to the job and the resource to the border to export it, at the start export raw resource until you have the capital to build buildings that make use of that resource, then export products of those buildings.
If you dont have the capital to build some expansion there are also loans.