It's really not that hard to get a game running with those cities.
I just rando created the world a few times through custom game and here are some world map results. Some of the Chinese cities in particular start really low.

- Look at all these poor suckers breaking game rules
- PoorCities.png (896.7 KiB) Viewed 2405 times
There's a -5 to +5 random modifier on wage rate when a city is spawned in to keep it somewhat randomized. Some of these cities spawned in at over 30 points in other iterations. If you look in the cities.DBF file you will find that Lanzhou is set to a default wage rate of only 25, it is actually the 3rd lowest possible wage rate in the entire file after Ho Chi Minh City and Bangalore at only 20. These cities probably could probably spawn in at 15 wage rate if they got the worst luck of the draw
Here's a list of all the cities that are or can go below 30 points in wage rate.
Code: Select all
Lanzhou China 25
Harbin China 30
Shenyang China 30
Lagos Nigeria 30
Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam 20
Mumbai India 30
Bangalore India 20
I really don't mind that these cities are that low though. I just wish that the script command allowed me to go that low as well.
I'd prefer more freedom in modding even if that means I can potentially break the game, that's my risk and my own responsibility if you ask me. Artificial constraint of modders is the bane of my existence.
If you somehow can't reproduce it, I am willing to send a save game but I think this is the real juicy information that you wanted anyway. Sending a save game is actually pointless since it is easily reproduce-able, just spam that custom game button a few times with maximum cities enabled to improve speed till you hit the jackpot.