Cavalary: Cavalary giveaway's games impression.
Yes, I would agree that Evil Islands feels little rushed at the end, probably caused by a deadline the devs had to face.
I have put in some decent hours into SimCity 4, but never really reached the stage where your city is very huge and very developed. When I return to it I'll probably do so as each time I return to that game I feel like I'm accomplishing more and more.
Had two characters for my Arcanum playings, finished the game (actually went for the evil ending) with the custom one (a Human bandit named Mr. Brko, in translation it would be Mr. Mustache xD) and for the other (pre-made) one I focused more on enjoying the world and exploration and pretty much ignored most of the main story.
As for Sid Meier's Pirates! I have managed to beat it. The final score was 103(out of 100) on Rogue difficulty. I did made it to Swashbuckler difficulty (I think that was the highest one) but it was awfully hard so I switched back, also missed finishing some side-quest.