I love the challenge this mod offers too. I play exclusively with the "impossible" settings. It is possible to do but I've had to develop specific strategies to do so. It takes me a looooong time to get a city up to populations of 25,000 let alone 75,000 or more. I am on my 3rd city now using this mod. It has a population of 25,000. The other two developed bugs that I never could figure out after the mishaps of a couple CS updates within the past year or so. Could be I just got bored(Once I've gotten a city to a population of 75,000 finance is pretty easy, really even at 25,000); that the effort to figure the remedies outweighed the appeal of just starting a new city with my newly developed strategic skills (Can I build the city faster ... more efficient?). As of late I have introduced a cheat for asthetic city building purposes that (unfortunately) makes it a lot easier to increase land value. I've increased the effect radius of Fire, police and health facilities through a mod "Service Radius Adjuster": http://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=785237088.
CS update v1.6.0 killed my play just a few hours of play after that cheat. To add some balance to that I now play "Impossible" setting yet also max out the cost to 1000% and set maintenance to 280% of those facilities. I just got my city to load today for the first time since CS v1.6.0. Within just a minute of play land values are skyrocketing ... I don't know why?