I enjoy going into a city building game and thinking out exactly what I’d like the city to look like beforehand. But, it doesn’t always work because the city will eventually outgrow the original design.

The need to have the city constantly growing is a real killer for realism here, I think. It basically makes super careful planning impractical.

I think most of the problems are downstream of this. For example, your fields will probably have to be moved after a couple years. The city will expand and you’ll want to replace it with higher-value industry. And you’ll be scouting out a new massive area for your new fields, which will make your old ones obsolete. So, you’ll move your fields every few years. Now, crop rotation doesn’t make sense, unless the crops destroy the soil at some ridiculous rate.