Unable to create your city at this time. Please claim a city again later

I feel it is necessary to throw in my 5 cents on this sh!tshow launch. My buddy and I have been unsuccessfully trying to play together for the past hour. After skipping to the Europe servers to avoid the hideous server waits (do you even get in after 20 minutes or is it just a *chance* to get in?!), we had to spam the city creation button 20-50 times to get a city. My experience was as follows:

• My first one bugged completely because I didn't hit play immediately (clicked on the friend icon in the upper right). I could not hit play, but when I clicked on it, it was a "new" plot. So I tried to recreate my city and it said it was already taken. Lovely. 
• Second try at a new region, spam the creation button til you get a city, this time immediately hit play and load in. Okay good, I'm in. But I cannot invite my friend, nor can I see him in my friends list. I mistakenly exit out of the game to try to invite him. When I click on "resume game", oh, look, you're not playing any games. I must have dreamt that. 
• I exit out to try a different european server and get stuck in my current quandry - the infinite tutorial loop. For whatever reason, my first 5-10 launches of the game tonight did not prompt me to play any tutorials (indeed I was none the wiser). But now that the game insists I play the tutorial, I have no choice every time but to load into a "tutorial" that has every single button grayed out, no instructions, and nothing happening. The city roads are even disconnected! Now it's time to hunt the forums for yet another workaround... 
• EA, my hat is off to you. I just paid $60 to get tea bagged in the face for an hour. Welp, time to dive back in...