I had the exact same feeling with the final map, but not that one. Odd.
Out of curiosity, are you trying to plan ahead between the first and second stages, like putting greenhouses where it'll benefit the second stage? I personally can't do that, and I'm not sure it's necessary, but it vaguely sounds like you're trying to?
I'd be curious to see what your approach is, although it's hard to explain over text. Good luck, though! It's definitely doable!
I'm 20+ tries in and only seem to be doing worse the more effort I put in, I can't even get to phase 2 anymore. I'm placing scrubbers and greenhouses to minimize both gaps and overlap and attempting to expand the river network so I can get power to the lowest level, which costs 350 (excavator --> calcifier --> wind turbine) for what feels like every two inches of river. I reset the map to make sure there IS an initial river system (have seen a few maps where it seemingly fails to generate), that the river actually connects up, and that there's a decent distribution of stone across the top two levels, but there seems to be a hard limit of one stone patch on the lowest level, and because of that it's not possible to hold out for phase 2's cheaper buildings before building more than one or two excavators.
The part that drives me insane is that I don't see many different ways to proceed on any given map. The top two levels are basically the same every time and sometimes I finish it with more money than I started with, but because of how expensive it is to get power around the bottom that money just evaporates in fewer turns than I can make it back. It's hard to feel like the majority of maps Highlands generates are even winnable.
Ouch. Well, I'm not sure what we're doing differently, precisely... you shouldn't need more than one or two Excavators? It's fine to have to build some, and it's not worth wasting your total coverage to delay building Excavators; due to order of operations, you need to build them before Scrubbers, and you'll probably need one, so you might want to build one with the initial starting budget.
I personally delay building greenhouses as late as possible, waiting until the verge of bankruptcy, and only in places where I won't build more scrubbers. I feel like that helps with getting the most out of greenhouse placement. Fun fact, if you have a single wind turbine in the middle of nowhere, the best coverage is to place 4 scrubbers above, below, left and right of it, then 3 greenhouses (1 line and 2 L pieces).
Otherwise, well, the game's hard to put into words. I recorded a video if it'll help. Although, maybe it's a puzzle you'd rather solve yourself? Up to you if you want to watch it! (Still uploading at the moment of writing.)
Played the first two maps without realizing A) I could pan around to see the whole area, and B) I could change the shape of the greenhouses. So glad I read this comment. That's what happens when you don't read the controls, I guess!
This game is an absolute breath of fresh air. Once I finish it I'm going to go back and play the original jam version to see how it all started.
