I didn't notice any instructions or tutorials tbh ... I basically played it by doing what felt natural or logical from my pov.,
So when the resources started stacking up I thought the lower right window was a container where I could get the building process for a house to start.
And I didn't get the toolbar you had in the demo with Rick and Tim (btw for multi-select you should have a click and hold mechanism , just lmb ).
Now from what I gathered, you don't want to spend months on this anymore, which is understandable.
So I won't bore you with more text, but I think that if you elect not to use a tutorial(or at least have it available) , then the UI experience should be a bit more polished I think .
But again I don't play games in this genre, closest thing is Civ6...but there (if I have time to play ...or just get sick of developing my own game -fixing effin bugs in king of crokinole) I never read or do the stat thing, I basically pick Alexander and take over the world through warfare ... and I don't know anyone who goes for the other victories ...and if they do, I am unsure if I really do want to know them :)
So maybe you need to take my words with a grain of salt , I just know that sometimes you're so deep into your game that you miss the bigger picture ...happened to me a lot of times and then it helps to get a complete outside view