Yeah, there was always something about this game that rubbed me wrong, and I LOVE city builders. It ran ok...but some of the mechanics were just shite. The aforementioned trading system basically tried to force you into MP by not giving you enough of the basic stuff, and the trade ratios were, shall we say, predatory?
That and I remember some micro aspects of that just made me go "ugh, i do not want to **** with this in an advanced game."
Don't get me wrong, some of it was beautiful and the city designing was pretty fluid and what you'd expect out of this gen of a city builder. But all the crap hanging around the game....the Avatar Creation, the community thing, some poor performance in certain areas, and some really terrible mechanics....
I gave it 4 hours and never looked back.