@Kralith This
The city requirements are set to realistic values, to lower them would skew the results and pretty much invalidate that whole aspect of what's being tested.
When you run a test, you need results across the spectrum to measure against, those towns that make it to the top Rank before the test is over are one element of the testing results, but so are those cities that will keep getting demoted back to Rank 1 over and over, only to build and fall again, and those who find a comfortable median level of say Rank 7 to 10 by the end, and every flavor in between. This will represent a cross-section of what can be expected over a longer term run of the game.