Nice mechanics and idea, but it’s lacking an onboarding experience. I needed one run to figure out, what can and should be done. In general only having an icon is ambigious. An text overlay, what a key press does or why something is currently not possible (building a base, converting someone), would help a lot.
A common way would be to show what is required and highlight the still missing parts in red. That could mean that you show the base icon with the necessary resources (x trees, y stones) and color the missing resource in red. Or in case of the converting, a red base could be shown. Although this would not solve all problems.
At some point of time the game must communicate, what is the goal of the game. For a jam game the simplest solution is a wall of text.