I might be too late now, but there was one little detail that I left off of my advice. Since your game wasn't paused when you last HotSynced, when you loaded it again a bunch of time had passed (from the game's point of view). Take a look at the date/time stamp on that savegame file on your PC and set your Palm clock to match. Then, load the game, launch it, pause the game, then put your Palm clock back to the correct date/time. All will be well.

If I'm too late, the knowledge will always help you if there's ever a next time!

I guess I should have seen this coming on my Palm. The game was running a lot slower with 50 villagers. I'm wondering if this is a Tungsten|E issue? Does anyone else have a slower running game when they have more villagers?

I started noticing the gameplay get slower around 20 villagers.

Even on my T5, which is a very fast Palm, the villagers begin to slow down as I approach the max population.

My Palm was also slow in response when I tried to click on "Continue Game". Should that be the case as well?

Also, before I Hotsync my game, should I always put it on pause first?

It's not a bad idea to get into the habit of pausing the game before you HotSync. That way you can safely load your savegame anytime you need it.

The reason that it was slow when you clicked on "Continue" was that it had a LOT of work to do catching up on all that elapsed time. That's normal (and also an indication that the game thinks it's been a long time since you last checked on it).

Yep, no sleep allowed! No, really, the game will always take a certain amount of time to update, but the longer you've been away, the longer the update takes!

Ah! No sleep! Noo! hehe. Well actually when I first started playing the game, I would secretly wake up in the middle of the night and update my village. This game is so addicting!

That sure looks like a corrupt savegame file to me. FWIW, I have gotten into the habit, at least once a day, or whenever a significant event occurs, of going through the following:
1. Put the game on "Pause". This prevents Time-warp.
2. Do a hot-sync. This puts your savegame file, VillageSavegame.pdb into a folder like C:\Program Files\palmOne\(your hot-sync name)\Backup
3. Move the savegame file, VillageSavegame.pdb to another folder.
4. Rename the savegame file. I just add a number after "VillageSavegame" so I have VillageSavegame0.pdb, VillageSavegame1.pdb and so on.
5. Continue your game by taking it off "Pause"

Now, if you want to return to any point in the past, you can just rename one of your archived savegames back to VillageSavegame.pdb, and double click on it. Now when you do a Hot Sync, it will restore your game to the state it was in when you made that particular savegame file.

It is handy to keep notes about what the state of the game was for each savegame file.

Sorry, this is too late to help Gemelle but maybe it will help someone in the future.

I have learned (painfully) that the Palm platform (and the iPAQ, and the Zaurus, etc., etc....) are inherently prone to messing up your files just when it is least convenient

That's been my experience, too, Walt! I'd like to add that if you change versions of Village Sim, such as installing a fix, you might not be able to use all of those savegame files that you backed up. So, if any of those games are important to you, they should be restored to the version of the game that produced them.