This might have a bearing on this game -- I don't know yet -- but I finally (after however many years since Master of Magic) figured out that I'm better off never scheduling more than one thing for construction or training. There are at least two connected reasons why.
1.) No game will start construction until your resources are available to begin. But if you tell the computer you're planning to start a Wizard's Tower (for example), then that city will be focused on preparing to do that -- INSTEAD OF focusing on generating extra gold or mana or some other resource (e.g. research). The normal incomes will still be going on, but there's typically a set of extra orders for generating more of some resource (e.g. population) than normal rates. So unless I'm going to start working on another project instantly, I should order my city to be focusing on extra resource production of some kind (usually cash).
2.) Once a project has been completed, the next project moves to the front of the line of course -- where it sits there waiting for enough resources to start. Not only does this distract the city from focusing on extra resource generation meanwhile (as in problem #1), but it is practically impossible to predict ahead of time whether I'll really have enough resources to start every new project advancing to the start of the line on any given turn. Usually some project(s) will kick off ahead of the others. But the situation may have changed so that I need some specific project(s) to start now, if possible, and not others!
If I just ignore the option to schedule projects in advance, I not only gain maximum extra resources in any situation, but I also have maximum flexibility to focus on starting projects at the most efficient times as circumstances vary. For example, oh a hero has shown up wanting to be hired, and now I've not only got extra cash on hand that I wouldn't have had before, but I can flexibly decide which project(s) I can delay starting in order to hire the hero asap -- or, alternately, I can decide whether I really need to start all those projects even if the hero may ride away before I can gather up enough resources again to hire.