After seeing and reading about agent issues (mostly fire and garbage truck, bus and police car conga lines) as reported in: http://www.reddit.com/r/SimCity/comments/19uev9/does_this_game_even_have_ai/
I've come to the conclusion that the glassbox engine was known to be fundamentally broken by the developers. As the significant rewriting required to make it work properly would consume more development resources (specifically time, have to meet that release date) than EA was likely willing to grant, every effort was put into refining the game and it's launch in such a way as to draw attention away from the fact that game simply doesn't work as a city simulator for any realistic definition of the term city.
The small city size limits the extent to which it can manifest. The region system and the online only components allow the server to be an unknowable entity that the player can attribute problems to. The closed beta limited the time of a session such that the problem likely wouldn't be seen. The press beta was not likely to include the critical number of "efficiency freaks" needed to positively confirm it's existence. And the release shit-storms have all served to obfuscate fundamental issues with gameplay.
Chiefly though, I'd site the willingness of of EA to give a "free game" away to people who purchased it (or will purchase it, given it's an offer for anyone who purchases it until the 18?!?) as a means to hopefully keep the DLC revenue stream open.
I'd love to chalk this up to humorous incompetence on EA's part, but everything here seems to be too market savvy for me to accept it.
