It is more an issue of flow rate and pressure. Your pump has an associated pump curve showing flow and pressure. At wide open, lots of flow with no pressure. That’s the bottom right of the curve. The upper left of the curve is max developed pressure with zero flow. In between shows how your pump supplies water at different pressures, or “feet of head”.
When you look at all the possibilities of which zones could be running at the same time, if you have 4 large zones all open at the same, you will have a whole lot less pressure at the sprinkler heads than if only one zone is running. This means the performance of the sprinklers will be much different in those two scenarios.
In normal sprinkler design, all zones are sized based on available flow, which is normally considered a fixed value. I definitely understand your predicament with the utility, but don’t see an easy solution with 4 separate controllers running off of one pump.
I would suggest visiting www.irrigationtutorials.com and pay special attention to the Country Bumkin Water section where he talks about flow and pressure from a pump.
Good luck.
Chuck