Thanks for the great feedback Seymion. You're right, it is a resource management game and I agree that it would benefit from being longer.
The different locales is an excellent idea. In my original designs I had a similar idea where every few days you would "see" some point of interest, such as a city or a mine, which would give you different chances of finding things (and potentially more characters) and you would have to make the choice if the extra coal/time was worth it to stop. It sounds like we are on the same wavelength. Unfortunately I ran out of time myself to implement it.
I loved "This war of mine"! It's a huge compliment being compared to a game like that. It was by accident, as I didn't think of it when designing the game, though I wouldn't be surprised if that feeling was somewhere in my subconscious when creating the mood for it.