I'm trying to keep the same feel from 1.42, you'll have to be the judge of that however. The emphasis is still on city building, if anything the growth is more organic than before. The new way population works requires it. You can only build structures if you have a free pop, and you can only get free pops from having enough food, and enough spare housing for your settlement to grow, so it's a balance of securing enough food and housing to support everything else.
The change from individual people to abstract "pops" means that you'll be placing a lot fewer houses. The trade settings are very similar to 1.4, but I'd like to revisit them in the future.
Thanks for playing!