Thank you for playing and taking time to leave a comment! :)
I was afraid that, as it is hidden, the pattern mechanic would be too hard to discover; I guess I worried to much. ;) I'm really glad you liked this feature in particular. We think of it as second call to the theme because the player has to rediscover how to build farms, water channels, etc.
About the clarity of the gauges, that's a fair point. The idea was the following: you have to keep the production of each ressource at 100% because it represents the needs of your population (we didn't have the time to scale the needs to the population level). If you have less than 100% production, you don't meet the needs of your population, so it decreases.
Actually, we find particularly difficult to synthetize "you have to compensate that much techno-building production and you have that much low-tech production while the needs of your population are as much" in a simple graphical representation... We admit our choice may not be the clearest option so, if you have any suggestion, please feel free! :)