Earlier on EA announced that they would release some news on the second patch for SCS this week. Although no release date for the second patch has been set as yet, details of it are emerging on the official SCS forums.

It appears critique on SCS being too easy has been taken to heart:

We are proud to announce the introduction of three new Strategic Modes of play, Basic, Hardcore and Nightmare, which will stretch your city-building skills to the limit.

According to the SimCity Team these new Strategic Modes impact gameplay all over the board, making it harder to balance finance and Sims happiness. These Strategic Modes are said to differ greatly from the Creative Modes that the team apparently decided to dub the current difficulty settings. The patch also includes polishing of the UI to match the atmosphere of your cities, optimisations, and (very important!) bug fixes.