I also seem to hit the "not ticking" bug. Most often when I'm idle and switching to another window/tab. Is it possible one of the critical timers is not firing (and/or not rescheduling itself) when the page is not on top/in the foreground?
PS: Please add a button to force a save and/or export/import a save game, so if we do have to refresh, we can be more confident it has saved.