Thanks for the encouragement. I think I may have saved it. I got the food way up (for two people that is) and the woman had moved to elderly so I went ahead and worked on increasing the population. Now we have 2 little girls and a boy - the first girl is gifted in research (although now I'm wondering if I should have chosen farming), and things seem to be running well with 640 food, 4870 tech, levels 2 in farming, medicine and science, and level 1 in construction, fertility and spirituality.

I am thinking to purchase the spirituality tech when I hit 5000 tech points. Maybe I'm just too sentimental, but I'd like the two surviving settlers to be remembered, not just decompose like the rest, especially since this is my young daughter's game.

--C (who is now toggling between three games - my first where rats killed most of the pop, including my healers, and the one that I started because I was sure these other two games were lost - it's doing quite well.)