Well...
The game is very easy.
Unfortunately, several of the ways to make it harder, are easily overriden by building mods, and would require lots of changing individual buildings.
So I had the following idea:
First, make starting money zero.
Second, limit how much loan you can take, also maybe raise interest rate.
Third, lower a bit taxes income.
Fourth, make mayor rating much more easy to take a plunge, to make civic buildings (And thus their expenses) more necessary, I would start with making crime affect the rating negatively a lot (this might require Crime doesn't pay as dependency though), so you cannot go on forever without police stations.
So, any mod like that exist, if not, is doable? Any hints on what I should look for to do it? I don't found out yet how mayor ratings are calculated, at all.
You should talk to Cogeo. He's of a similar opinion; unfortunately playing the game as a game isn't appealing to most dedicated players anymore, but Cogeo should have something to satisfy your appetite. Drop him a PM; I haven't seen him in a while.
Necroing my thread to say that I've been working on this on and off for a while.
The stuff I mentioned in my original thread are already implemented even.