I'd like to weigh in but I'm terribly new and an awful player. I play on the 25mil servers, because I can get a game in. I enjoy that crowd. Some of the Tycoons there talk to me.
Calimero's difficulty changes... Well heres what it'll do. More space/player will be required. Less players/server will play. Congestion to me seems bad. Changing the 90 and slopes will create congestion, not increased difficulty.
A simple way to improve difficulty is to turn on infrastructure maintainence. But is that fun for over 50% of the gamers? Prolly not.
I have really no suggestion here, other than maybe adding flats tires, for the vehicle-worlds. Flocks of migrant birds for the airplane-worlds. Typhoons for the sea-worlds.
Knutor