You picked the game up after the server issues were handled.
How large have your citys gotten? There are some things that you can't spread out, trash being one of them. Once your city hits gridlock, your trash trucks can't reach buildings. Trash builds up and causes fires. Then with major fires spreading all over its hard for your fire trucks to also reach the fires due to traffic and also the fire truck AI.
Long story short, nomatter how much you spread out your fire stations. All of your fire trucks will head to the same fire, so they only address the fires one at a time. Add that to any traffic issues and its hard to address the issue in large citys.
I would also argue HIGHLY against the game being more advanced than previous simcity games as well. They took out a lot of the simulation really.
Having said that, I still enjoy it. But I am dissapointed in the way it came out.
Wes