I remember playing the old Pharaoh's games, myself. I enjoyed watching buildings auto-upgrade whenever the required resources were available. At the time, I was too young to dig into the depths, and let it do its own thing with the default settings for the buildings and whatnot.
But in response to your population question, Urist McSpike, what do you think about unemployment having a minor happiness/madness hit, while the Colonial Employment Bureau provides them make-work? Random hauling jobs, street cleaning? Doesn't pay very much, but they could perhaps get a token for booze every day, to provide for their basic survival. This makes expanding the basics more meaningful, as it stops the negative economic hit.
In the article 'Storytelling as Game Design', they talked about the starting buildings produced by those who didn't have any work, makeshift and dirt cheap huts and the like. They could become slums and be really ugly should unemployment get too high. They could also negatively affect traffic/logistics/hauling/jobs that go through the 'slums' area, pesturing and begging. I like that better than just going 'oh, they're unemployed and thus unhappy', although if it gets too bad, I do expect some of them to leave.
Another thought on that, of course, would be that otherworldly creatures could more easily slip into slums unnoticed, compared to the other places of your city. Guard patrols are less, crime is higher, lawlessness would be common... poisoned opium, really bad booze... Yeah, that could get so messy. Could make gathering madness alot easier, though. But that's only if you have some way of using it for anything other than regular -FUN-.