I'm 20+ tries in and only seem to be doing worse the more effort I put in, I can't even get to phase 2 anymore. I'm placing scrubbers and greenhouses to minimize both gaps and overlap and attempting to expand the river network so I can get power to the lowest level, which costs 350 (excavator --> calcifier --> wind turbine) for what feels like every two inches of river. I reset the map to make sure there IS an initial river system (have seen a few maps where it seemingly fails to generate), that the river actually connects up, and that there's a decent distribution of stone across the top two levels, but there seems to be a hard limit of one stone patch on the lowest level, and because of that it's not possible to hold out for phase 2's cheaper buildings before building more than one or two excavators.
The part that drives me insane is that I don't see many different ways to proceed on any given map. The top two levels are basically the same every time and sometimes I finish it with more money than I started with, but because of how expensive it is to get power around the bottom that money just evaporates in fewer turns than I can make it back. It's hard to feel like the majority of maps Highlands generates are even winnable.