Oh it might have been been a slowdown then, yes.
Re: wisps
I think if your world grows bigger it will be necessary to use wisps. Especially if you're forced to create little resource hubs some distance from eachother, or spots where certain resources would accumulate faster. Because my strategy very quickly devolves into building everything as close/stacked as possible right now. If I need to be in more than one place, I would immediately know to build wisps.
I forgot to mention how, as per usual, I'm insanely impressed with your quality of work in 7 days, yet again!