So, I've tried this game a couple of times - and always get bogged down and frustrated.
Is there a good guide/walkthrough for a newcomer that will get me established?
I seem to remember one - that quickly went off track after you choose to sell/not sell one of the initial girls (I think it assumed you would sell, but also suggested waiting because she gave better stats when you used her?)
Well, this game is still under development, so there's no garantee new changes or new mechanics won't make existing guide obsolete... (Not to mention there's always bugs and soft locks, new version might fix them, but also create new ones...)
The guide you mentioned was decent, until they put a cooldown timer on every "fun activity" (no three taming in a row).
For a guide at this point, simply put, you just exhause all dialog, farm up enough ego, money and power to srike on girls,
do all the mission they can provide, execute all the possible policies, and have fun. (And pray you don't get a softlock somehow...)
About what I usually do, after finishing tutorial, you can start you're offensive with the temp girl.
(Jill, the one you can sell for some cash.)
Just keep pushing downtime during weekend until you can fuck Jill regularly (give you 15 ego every time, I think.)
Only then you can spend weekends to explore the city.
(Note: I usually don't intend to sell her, as she can provide some debuff on every other girl in CSG, plus there's a secretary arc for her in the later game.)
After Jill is done, then do the receptionist (Britney), you can pay 200 buck invite her to drink (fucked, take her panty for trophy). She's also vital for you to visit new location (Golden Pawn restaurant, Berlin night club).
Once you get steady supply of ego boost (by control or break said two girls), let's focus on your boss (Susan) for a while.
Though you cannot bring her under you're heel (yet), she's vital for your promotion at this point. Exhause dialog, do the
IT audit and organizing CSG client base quest to get some power, do the "sending surplus document to Comliance" quest to open the location of Compliance department.
Chat with Debborah (your rival) and Anne (sales rep) if you have spare ego, Debborah also provide some debuff on Anne and Britney.
Remember, you need to head to HR to finish some "corporate value lessons" to be able to keep climbing the ladder,
and it has been reported that if you don't finish it before some certain action was done on Susan, you WILL get softlock on her.
(Ambition permanently lock at 12), so you should take the lesson ASAP once it pop up. (The dialog tree started with Susan, then you need to find Jada at HR to do 3 sessions).
After you lower Susan's ambition enough, tell her to handover interm program to you so you can get your hands on Amanda.
At this time you should also start your on the Titan Defense contract, while lower Anne's ambition to a certain level.
Oh I forgot to mention you probably need to tell the girls to start wearing slutty clothes,
and spend some money at Vixxens to cover their account. (Should be vital for breaking Anne)
After controled most of the girl in office, exhausting every dialog option with Deborrah and Susan, start your move on bringing down the duel by sabotage Debborah's presentation. (With help of Amanda, as Brittney's option is ill adviced.)
The outcome is that Susan's superior Tracy was not impressed, and starting to consider you're a better candidate for managing CSG. By this point you can finally takeover the department, control Susan and demote her, then has the power to wash Debborah out of manager trainee program.
One last piece of advice, money.
You should make sure you have 3k at every weekend, as it's possible to take a flight to Vegas and gain extra 2K per week.
(39% winning rate, so prepare fore an extensive Save/Load attemps)
Keep doing that until you got promoted enough that money is no longer an issue.
(You can take Vegas flight at workdays, but I tend to use them to strike on my "co-workers")
Now I don't think there's gonna be a full walkthrough ever,
what I typed above are just a vaguely walkthourgh about taking CSG,
who knows how long will it be to write a full walkthrough...?
Just pay atention to the game dialogs, there's alway NOTE suggesting what you should do next.