Thanks for this recommendation. I'll give CS a retry if this mod puts the traffic and pop sim on par with sc4.

It won't change anything about the population sim, just traffic.

There exist other mods that change the population sim; I'm not familiar with them. C:S mods ... well there's a ton of them. It's a pretty deep rabbit hole.

There's a "realistic population mod" but depending on how you use it it just ands some multipliers.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=20251...

Note that it is VERY easy to make the game impossible with this mod, and to make it painfully easy.