I've tried it thrice on easy and have never gotten very far at all. I've been very careful and meticulous and am extremely good at management/simulation type games.
You reach a point where the deck offers nothing but regular worker cards. Stops giving you water carriers/wells. Only offers herman's ditch without ever giving you maps which are apparently a prereq, etc. So it bleeds you down to -100 rep and ends the game.
I tried two more times after the first failure and had the same behavior each time. I had built up the necessary structures for storing my four workers, four permits, and four building materials. And each time it would lock me this way. I refreshed and tried it on NG as well as here.
I am 100% certain that this is the behavior that everyone experiences playing since I am playing in a very NORMAL and careful way. I suspect most of you are alternate accounts of scriptwelder, pretending to heap praise on the game, yet betraying yourself because an actual large playerbase would be yelling about the unbeatability and general unplayabiliity of the game.