I just downloaded this from the German iTunes and started playing. You know, in case reaching some level would help me later in DS, like e.g. with Pet Hotel. I have to agree that the overall lack of energy is a tad displeasing. I mean, on the one hand I can live with having to wait so I get to spend more time with PHS, however, I don't see myself progressing too fast any time soon there...
Also I expanded too soon, cause now I have a quest for it and the next expansion requires help from other players - and I don't have any friends on there yet. (Plus, given the responses in this thread, I won't have many peeps too choose from :P). Why can't expansion quests work retroactively? (For all those games)
Something like: Have X expansions --> y/x
So if it requires me to have expanded my town thrice and I only did it twice so far, it'd show 2/3... THAT would make sense, especially given how often most of these games have expansion quests. I feel that those essentially punish me for expanding too soon.
I haven't played the 'old' CS, so I can't say much to that... I am however sure that if I run out of app space, this game is one of the candidates to get deleted first.