I came to the conclusion that Cities: Skylines is too basic, and C:S 2 doesn't really seem like it adds all that much, so I started playing Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic. The game offers a lot of difficulty options, so you can make it play somewhat like C:S if you want to, but it is an entirely different beast in it's "realistic mode."

In Cities: Skylines, you plop down a power plant, pumping station, sewage drain, run some cables and pipes, zone some residential, and unpause the game. In WR:SR, you must manage the logistics and construction of all these things. The sewage and water mains can only run from higher elevation to lower elevation, unless you install additional pumping stations. The electrical network requires you to build switches and transformers to step from 105KV to 22KV to 230V, and appear to observe Ohm's Law with regards to current and voltage drop. You also need to build heating plants and pipe steam to your residences and public services.

All of this infrastructure must be built by workers and machines. All these machines have fuel tanks which need to be filled, wear and tear which requires maintenance. Even something as simple as road construction requires delivery of construction materials, workers, and machines, and while that work is being done, no traffic is getting through. If you are not careful, you can block your buses carrying your workers to the heating plants in the dead of winter and cause a death spiral. It takes several hours of gameplay to get to the point where your first citizens can move in.

It took me several attempts before I could even start settling people, but here is my first residential microdistrict. My infrastructure is already absolutely cursed. That's the other thing. Once something gets built, you need a demolition crew to dismantle it, so if there is a power pole where you want your road to go, or an inconveniently located water main junction is preventing you from building a factory, you need to send more work crews and excavators and garbage trucks and haul the scrap to a dump. And that will shut down services for anything relying on that power pole / junction box.

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