Impossible or too easy, depending on how you play.
Less of a pure strategy game, and more of a constant "putting out fires" sim. I loves me some robot overlords! They really do a lot to help you balance the economy, by allowing you to focus (primarily) on housing and food production.
The storyline and scenarios are funny, but the gameplay is a little hit-or-miss. Basically it pulls you in too many different directions at once, with inefficient tools to address the problems. I felt like there were too many different types of resources for me to have any hope of reconcilling them. Tier 3 structures help because they're more efficient, but you need to acquire them FAST or you're fucked. Basically a society built on tier 1 or tier 2 units is doomed to failure because so many resources get burned to make other types of reosurces.
If you even stop to think about your strtategy for a split second, you'll lose precious weeks, and pausing hides the build menus you need in front of you to even make informed decisions. I guess I'm saying it might have worked better as a turn-based strategy game.
As in Sim City, you can sometimes paint yourself into a corner, such as running out of ore with no way to acquire more. I'm sure with enough practice and experience (or a carefully lopsided government, such my beloved robocracy,) it probably becomes easier to keep this many plates spinning. But having beaten it with an easy combo, I don't feel very motivated to play it again for a greater challenge. That is, I find this type of challenge more difficult and annoying than fun to play.
In the end, I guess the gameplay just wasn't for me. I'm more into the millitary RTS games, like Supreme Commander and... uh... was there ever another one? (TA doesn't count since it's basically the same game as SC.) Well, even though the genre wasn't for me, the presentation was top-notch. The great graphics, maps, music, and humor were enough to carry me through to an honest victory. (For certian values of "honest," that is. I used a cheap government, teh robots, and continued once or twice with a puppet sucessor. I did not resort to the chip-in-da-head because I figured it would render the game pointless.) Now that I've reached the end, though, I can't immagine subjecting myself to the middle again, under harsher circumstances.
Still, it's a great game, and just approachable enough to allow pleebs like me to claw my way through it once. Good job! :)
Or as we like to say in Robotopia, "11101110 10001010 00101010 00010010 10100100 0000101 11010010 10101111!"