At the end of the game, incomplete cities score 2 points per tile instead of 1, and their pennants score 2 each. Ambitious cities that ran out of tiles stop being dead weight, and the last few turns get a lot tenser.
Does your table play this?
Always open with the River expansion instead of the plain start tile — every game, not only when somebody suggests it. The River carries its own placement rule (no two consecutive river tiles may curve the same way), which belongs to the expansion rather than to this variant. What the habit buys is a board that begins as a spine with edges on both sides, so there are more legal placements early and far fewer dead ends late.
Play without farmers entirely: meeples may only be placed on roads, cities and cloisters. The most common way to teach the game — end-game scoring stops being a lecture.