I just want to share a recent experience around the pollusplosion mechanism.
I was able to create a city with no pollution at all. The lander handled garbage and I used nothing polluting (so no engineers, no science lab, etc), only farms, eateries, houses and banks (ans some other non-polluting like scouts, shrines, police, etc). It was really entertaining because I wasn't worried by unforeseeable deathplosion. I had more crowns than I was able to spend and a very good population cap (I used only large and luxury houses, so barely no crime). It was very "aesthetic" and peaceful (no neighbors), I felt like a Skylaxian in TLF.
However, when science costs became really high (more than 30 turns for one tech) I wanted to build some labs. I first built a hazmat, wait for it to complete, then built a pair of science labs adjacent to it. Then I was a bit greedy, I built tons of hazmats and some more labs (5 labs in total, I think), but garbage overflown the lander's capacity, so I built a trashdump with tons more hazmats and then disease hit: 100% pop infected in some turns. Fortunately, I unlocked the Zenith's disease immunity earlier and got no death from the disease. I tried to fight the disease but was unable to get it below 100%. I was barely more successful with fighting pollution with more tons of hazmats and powerdown-ing labs, but nothing efficient (balance feels... unfair, unfortunately).
TL;DR:
No-pollution game is cool! Try it!
The water/crops/meals/houses mechanisms are really cool by themselves.
The pollution/trash/graves/disease mechanisms are unbalance, but I'm sure they'll be as cool when reasonably handleable.
