There are just planty ideas gathered in this game, but i didn't like some of them. Although you should try this game.
I sort of didn't get the societies. Ok, it's good that they go that deep into the simulation, to add societies, but in this game, societies do play a large role in game. In a matter of earning money, the infrastructure of the city and it's layout and even the jobs for people are defined by which culture they are present in. It’s not that cultural tensions bother me, but for example police station. To work in Police station in CL you had to be blue person, but as far as i know, police officer can be ANYBODY. Red, orange, purple, china man, african, anybody who has enough knowledge to have there a job.
There also aren't any zonings, it's just click and place. The things couldn't get far worse, when you had to built certain facilities right next to the defined cultural housings just to make certain culture getting the certain job next to it's door. In my opinion this isn't very great. Even older simcity games had zoning, it would be a pleasure, that this game would have them too.
Also, alot of people complained, that building variety is very low in this game, but this didn't bother me too much, though i saw quite alot of same buildings all over the cities. Graphics in the other hand are quite great i must admit that.
Money management isn't very hard, if you build few waste treatments and electricity supplying buildings. This game however is still great, and let's hope Monte Cristo will learn on their mistakes, since this was their first game and the expansion clearly was a great addition to the game.
Let's just hope for a great future of city building simulations. This game sure is a sign of hope and worth buying if you like building cities.