Thanks for playing!
I usually try and dig canals after building the first city. By digging canals I can put farms in a safer place at higher grounds. Since the water level increases upwards, building on higher grounds is a good idea :)
It's a very small game, the goal could be to increase your population as high as you can. It gets tricky fast though - cities spread pollution, and grass consumes that pollution. Having moderately size cities not too close to each other can get you very far.
In case you haven't seen it yet, there is a menu to the top left to toggle things like rotation, pollution, and the height map as well :)
oooooh. I did not think of the canal's idea despite figuring out that you could decrease/increase height after a certain point. Was that intentionally a reference to how early astronomers' telescopes reflected the veins in their eyes onto the surface of a planet, causing the optical illusion of the Martian Canals. The idea of Martian Canals was also used by many early sci-fi writers who set adventures on Mars.
