I actually appreciated how difficult Sim City 4 was...Sorry to hear that the new game is a bit easier, but I'm sure there will be variables to alter to change that.
I'm not a fan of the limited map size of the demo. I hope that you can still built mega cities not just multiple cities in one region on the retail release.
Maybe in the final release you will be able to fine tune certain aspects of the game like you could in earlier releases such as disasters etc.