Try this initial build order

Greetings fellow Lords! I invite you to try this initial build order I've had great results with.

Edit: I'm told this only works in the original release and in normal difficulty.

TLDR

Upgraded worker's camp -> hitching post -> logging camp -> granary -> houses -> storehouse -> food -> wood -> market

Explanation

The main point of this build is to maximize early population growth by never having below 50% approval and speedrunning into houses so there's room for new families. The effects of early growth stack for the rest of your run. I've had much success doing this, so hopefully it'll do you good as well!

  1. Upgrade your homeless camp very first thing. If you do this immediately, it will completely negate the homelessness penalty and make it so you can start getting new families as early as April! I cannot overstate how much this is a game changer for the rest of your run.
  2. Next is a second hitching post. Again, this is a real game changer. The benefits of doing this early will stack up for the rest of your run. Resist the urge to build storage or food buildings. Your town can survive fine with the initial resources. As soon as the hitching post is done, order an Ox immediately.
  3. Build the logging camp next, obviously make sure it's right next to a big forest and preferably away from your hunting and berries (so you don't have to micromanage the work area for the rest of your run). When it's done, assign one family. Leave your other workers unassigned to carry stone for the granary (next step).
  4. Build the granary. Make sure it's right next to your food pile. If you do this right, food will be picked up before the April rains, so don't worry about it. Once it's built, assign two families.
  5. Next is one house with a small back yard. Later, you'll want two duplexes with big yards for veggies, but you won't have the timber to build them yet. Just make sure you have at least one house going so there's room for a family to move in in April.
  6. Once you have at least one house, start the storehouse. Build it next to the granary, close to the supplies. By the time it's done, the food should be all picked up, so you can transfer one family out of your granary into the storehouse and the other into the logging camp.
  7. Remember to keep building houses. After the initial one, make the two large duplexes and buy them veggie plots. Next, build the living space upgrade for the duplexes. Only then, keep building single houses with small yards. You don't need more than 2 veggies until mid and late game.
  8. Next is a food supply, only one for now. I was anxious when I first tried this build because you don't gather food until a couple months in, but the initial bread will get you through fine. Usually you want the berries first, to take advantage of the spring growth period. However, this depends on whether you have a rich meat deposit and what you want to do with your mid and late game, so feel free to do the hunting camp instead if you like (which is free to build BTW).
  9. As soon as your supplies are picked up at the storehouse, unassign the family and put it on food. Meanwhile, keep adding houses as available timber allows it.
  10. Build the woodcutter camp. Once it's done, unassign two families from the logging camp and shuffle them between food and wood depending on how much you have of each. Don't worry too much, you have all summer and autumn to stockpile food and wood for the winter.
  11. Once you have a surplus of 6 living spaces (5 for your initial families plus 1 for people moving in), you can demolish the worker's camp. The families there will move into available houses. Keep adding more houses as timber permits.
  12. Build a market and assign one family each to the granary and storehouse so they build stalls.

And that's it! Now you can transition into the mid game strat of your choice.

You can kind of set this up to happen automatically by starting the buildings and using the priority to determine build order. That way you can pretty much fast forward the first few months if you like.

As a final note, if you're upgrading the worker's camp and try to build something else at the same time, only the Ox guide will react and the rest of your workers will stand around the camp idly until it has the timber. Then they'll build it out, and only then they move on to other tasks. Setting priorities doesn't change this. You shouldn't be building anything else anyway at this time, but thought I'd point this out.