I liked being able to choose where to place different zones. It allowed for more creativity in how I wanted my neighborhood to look, as well as encouraging replaying to try different strategies. I think it would be helpful, particularly for new players, if there was a way to see what kind of buildings you could build with each zone, before placing a zone. Having something like a reference guide to give details to players who want more info, without putting too much into the core game, could be a nice balance of giving info vs. learning as you play.
The ratings were clearer this time for me. I think it would be nice if you include the information about what each thing gives bonuses for as well as what buildings increase it all the time, instead of giving different information on Campaign Day and the rest of the time. I found it easier to get each different building this time than with the old rating system, which made it easier to play with different buildings to see how they affected things.
The rally coins where a neat addition. Once I realized you could get bonuses based on how many you collected in a single walk, I spent a little more time thinking about my routes and how I wanted to move. Something that might be nice would be letting the player pick their route, instead of going with the quickest one, as there were times I wanted to go a different way to collect more coins as I traveled.
Having buildings cost more the more you built added to the strategy. Only having the first of any building be free when you activated a new zoning area made me do a little more planning as to the best location for each building. I did like that reclaiming a lot let you build anything in that zoning area for free. It felt like a nice reward for removing them.
Having a built-in fullscreen option or being able to maximize the window would be nice. With my setup, I found some things a little hard to read at the default scale. I was able to fullscreen it manually from the Task Manager menu, and everything looked just fine. But having the option in game would be preferred. On a somewhat similar note, having a quit option to close the game would also be more convenient.
I built a bus stop by the Market, but it didn't mark it as complete for the upgrade. Upgrading the Market and Community Center is an interesting idea, but it's not very clear how best to do it. Being clearer on what is meant by "units" would be helpful. I used the jobs at the Market and Community Center when I was low on money, so being able to upgrade them and get more job options, like I did in the previous version, was nice.
You can deploy a crowd, even when you don't have enough people. The crowd will no longer be following you, but it didn't look like they were on the road either.
When I assigned 5 of my crowd to Disruption, my success rate was listed as Marginal. When I increased it to 8, the success rate went down to Poor. Anything above an 8 when I was placing the crowd on the road showed a success rate of Poor, regardless of how many additional people I added or what option I picked for them to do.
When I tried to assign more than 10 people, the assign arrow greyed out and didn't let me add more. I could switch which activity I wanted to do and could add an additional person, but after adding one it greyed out again. I had to keep switching which activity I wanted to do if I wanted to assign 20 people to do the Area Protest. One of my kids pointed out the Max deploy was at 10, which may explain why it was greyed out. The max deploy wasn't very clear, nor was it clear how I could increase it. I believe, in playing more, that it was connected to Logistics, but it wasn't as clear as some of the other stats were, particularly since the information stayed the same on Campaign Day as on others.
When you have the Crowd Ability screen up, you can click on the Rating to get more information on them. The pop up will appear over most of the Crowd Ability screen, though under the "X". You can't close the pop up until you have closed the Crowd Ability screen.
The game overall is still fairly easy and favors the player. I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean the game can end quickly without exploring all the different options.
I enjoyed this update. It definitely feels like it is moving in the right direction.