Mm. Okay, I've done lots of cycle towns before, most of which were very short-lived, so I'll try to give you my best advice for starting up.
Try not to worry too much about a good map when resetting. This is a cycle town! It's not supposed to be pretty. When resetting for the initial town, I usually just pick the first map Rover suggests, haha.
When you're resetting for your initial village, try to aim for at least one popular villager in your lineup. If you're doing this for the benefit of other people, it's completely useless if you start with five Tier 5 villagers. Remember, you will never have a smug or an uchi in your initial lineup. You will have 5/6 of the original personalities. The next three move-ins will always be a smug, an uchi, and the remaining personality you don't already have.
Once you have your town, fill your Re-Tail with seashells or whatever, and get rid of the Someone from Anytown shirts IMMEDIATELY. This will prevent your villagers from putting on undesirable clothing, or selling their original furniture at the flea market.
On the first day, I highly suggest doing the basics to start your town. This will make things a lot easier later. Introduce yourself to all of your villagers, and talk to them until they tell you about saving. (And when they change their shirt, tell them you don't like it so they take it off immediately.) Buy the shovel and net/rod from Nookling Junction, and find your money rock -- pay off Tom Nook with your earnings from the money rock. If you do it right, you should have over 10k. Also, do the Isabelle tutorial! When she asks you whether you want to do fishing or bug catching, do the OPPOSITE of whatever Timmy and Tommy were selling. That way, Isabelle will sell you the tool you don't have. Catch some fish and bugs, and submit them to the museum. Write a long, friendly note on the bulletin board, and if you want to, use the paper Isabelle gives you to write long, friendly letters to your villagers. Preferably the ones that you think you'll end up voiding -- you're doing this to get your approval rating up for the following days. Trust me, it's much easier if you get this stuff out of the way first, before you do anything else. Also, if Redd happens to be in town on the first day, try to make the money to buy whatever genuine art piece he's selling! That will be more approval points when you submit it to the museum!
Once you have all that done, proceed to the next day.
As I said earlier, whatever villager personality type you don't have, you will get as a move-in. You will always get a smug, an uchi, or whatever you're missing. Try to roll for good villagers of these types, of course!
Also, during the next couple of days, keep trying to get your approval rating up. Water flowers, pull weeds when you see them, etc. You're going to want your approval rating to hit 100% so you can build a campsite.
However, do not actually build your campsite until you get your ninth villager. The ninth villager is random, and usually comes 1-5 days after the eighth. After you receive your eighth villager, TT forward a day, and make a new character. Look around your town, and if there's no plot, save and delete that character, and go forward another day. (Be sure to load your mayor in between, though!) Keep doing this -- saving when there's no plot -- until you're eventually ALWAYS rolling a plot. This villager is always a little tricky because you can get ANY personality type, but be persistent and try to get someone good.
Once you have your ninth, you can build your campsite! Build the campsite near the train station -- trust me, it will save so much time. There will ALWAYS be a camper two days after you pay off the campsite, so, as always, reset for someone good!
You only need nine villagers for villagers to want to start moving out. So you'll have to be careful not to accidentally lose anyone. But my tips are just for starting up a cycling town, not cycling in general!
Oh, and one last tip: if you want to, put a custom design down next to all of your permanent rocks. That way, you'll always know which one is the ore rock, and you can break it to horde ores. They're great for easy money, and you can sell them for a hella profit on the flea market at Re-Tail. I did that in a cycling town once, and it was beautiful.
Good luck!
