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

I haven't been able to play for ~8 hours.  Been reloading and I've hit just about every error message on this message board.

I knew that the always online DRM for a SIMCITY game was garbage but I was a dumb ass and bought it anyways.  Now that I think about this I have this experience with most EA games but this time it's twice as stupid for a single player city builder.