Considering that you don't really want to convert towns to cities during the tutorial... It's not a tutorial issue, it's just a feature Civ never had before.
Yeah, the tree choices suck, as you are limited to putting them in only one tree and there's a quadrillion unlocks as well, so your character can get starting bonuses after you've played the game for a few hours. Admittedly this makes each playthrough different, but considering you have to play the game to a certain point to unlock the bonuses, the first few plays are going to be harder, which is also a strange way of doing things. I don't even understand some of the more advanced game mechanics and there aren't enough indicators that you ought to be doing something, you just get told, hey, this other civ is doing better than you, hurry up and do something.
It's not all bad, but it doesn't play like a Civ game, so it's a massive learning curve, like where to build things and the fact that you can "overbuild" i.e. stack certain buildings on top of each other, but it's unclear what is the best way of doing this. The game is also very basic in terms of settings, you can barely configure a game. Things like natural disasters on light is quite intensive compared to selecting level 1 in Civ VI and so far there are no mechanics to limit things like flooding, at least not in the first two "ages".
Firaxis are going to have to address a lot of the playability issues, as some things feel too simple and you kind of just dismiss it, whereas other things are clearly quite complex, but the UI/UX isn't there to back what those things do. It's not the game I was hoping for or expecting and it's a lot closer to Humankind, with some bits borrowed from Ara and other games as well, instead of focusing on the strengths of Civ and its mechanics. In fairness, Ara has a bit too much micro management for my taste, but Civ VII is harder to grasp, but maybe I'm just missing a few things and that's why.