I looked at your strategies but it's just not worth the effort at this point. I think you neglected to say that what you put in the deck by what you play might also influence the outcome. If every time I get a pier, I play it, I put a lot of islands in the deck, which I'm likely to get as I spend money on cards but which won't make me money, so I should hesitate to play piers if I want something that will make money. I played this game again a few days ago and got a lot further, at least to population 70. But I can just bring a YouTube video up and see others finish the game. It doesn't seem like a big deal to me. If I have to be careful how I stack the deck just so I can piece together a rudimentary village, it's no fun. I also took the time to play Micropolis or SimCity classic and realized I'm so over it. I don't care about building a city of large population using the same old strategies. I just don't care anymore. And I think the devs of this game may have overlooked the pleasure that can be gained from playing that is countered by thinking about elements that are at least somewhat out of their control. After putting so much thought and care into how I play, running out of money or cards and getting a game over sucks. Hell, by the time you've played more than a few times, failing for unsatisfying reasons, finishing this game sucks. It's not rewarding enough if you've spent all the time and effort. At least with SimCity classic, as you learned the game, you got better results and it wasn't limited to some deck AND there was no game over to stop you from continuing to try where you were. You didn't have to start over if you didn't want to but you could if you wanted to start fresh.