Houses are placed on top of each other, metal availability is bad (and the textures are old).
First two problems reported by Gurken Khan: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/82754-alpha-26-pre-releaserelease-candidate-build-testing/page/3/#comment-502958
here is quick update to improve the situation.
Note that now different civs wills start with different population caps, but l would say that is their inherent handicap then.