Yes, I wanted to divert from the plant or eating theme, so I had this idea of a minimalist "civilization in less than a minute" game. While I think the implementation could be better, it seems to me that the concept some potential.
Concerning the claims on already owned territory, it was the way the game was originally planned, but it ended up creating very weird and confusing maps with a lot of tiny exclaves due to the way the game processes the IA and the end turn.
I am aware of the problem. I tried to solve it but the fixes implemented ended up breaking the flow of the the game. The key seems to be to not use the button too much, only when you have more than 3-4 seconds left until the end of the turn. Even so, in my experience, using the time you have left to plan your next move is generally a good idea ;)
I prefered to let the player decide if he/she feels the map is worth playing, and making it possible to reroll it easily. This is to keep some variety in the map generation. It is clear that it leads to some non-challenging maps, but I found out that some players just enjoy the chill map-painting experience :)
The problem I have with this system as it is currently is that a new player can have a very tough game due to bad luck on map generation and have a bad first impression.
