Also, if you have a low end PC, you should reduce the quality of textures, models and shadows. If you set the shaders too high (7-10), try reducing that to around 2.

Honestly, the improvement in quality is insane.    

Historically accurate faces:   If you knew a little bit about extant Greek marble busts, you could definitely recognize these 3 figures. 

14 months later I'm getting results like this:

I think the settings you used could be the issue, - Huge maps is quite demanding on the CPU and RAM. On Windows you only have 4GB allocated to the game (for 32bit builds). Usually we play on medium size and that is already enough to accommodate 8 players! - The game shouldn't last 2 hours, most games finish in 30 minutes or less. This goal of the game is to destroy your enemy, not to build SimCity - You should set the pop limit to 200 or 300