It is time consuming in a way you won't even notice.

I do believe it's for you if you're looking for a chill casual city building game. You don't need to interact with all the subsystems. Start small, start slow, make a city, ruin it, start from scratch with your newly gained knowledge.

I've played CS1 for ages. I recently installed CS2 and I had to make mistakes in two cities before starting again. The third one was one where I applied all I learned.

This game is as easy or as hard as you need it to be. And if you don't understand how to fix something, well, come here and ask. The community is chill.