You know, I was kind of stepping down (yes I consider it a step down) to this way of playing too. Stop trying to create a realistic living city and just game the system to get the maximum out of the thing. This could actually be fun, if it was not for the ridiculous number of rollbacks and lost cities. Every time I get something nice going I get the dreaded "your city is not processing properly". It just does not function on so many levels.
I gather the best option for EA is to say, sorry people, we fucked up. We are taking 6 months to fix it, in the mean time stop using the product as it is because it is not finished. I would rather have a good working product in 6 months then getting patch after patch and end up with a mess which might well be worst then the mess it already is.