I fault the people complaining about performance of a city builder running at 1440p more than the developer. You're looking at concrete and asphalt and brick textures and shit like that. You don't need anything higher than 720p.
So if I have a budget PC, I should be content with running this game at Nintendo 64 resolution? Or I guess it's on me to fork over $1,000 for a high-end GPU if I want to run it at 2/3 the resolution of a midrange mobile phone, as you suggest.
I don't want the UI to look horrible on my 27" 1440p monitor.