after a year of playing this sporadically and starting to think the update was a lie, i finally got him to come back :)
R.I.P the Hovsnol, my first civilization to stave off nuclear armageddon for long enough to establish a space colony, only to be wiped out by a rogue swarm of self-replicating nanites, just as they were about to discover quantum computing...
Okay, but all jokes aside, this is a super fun game, simple but brilliantly executed! Will definitely be returning to it to see if I can get any civilization to achieve a "win" state!