Have you checked the difficulty setting? The reason I ask is that what you describe about getting the algae too soon sounds like what happened to me when I kept starting new villages and then deleting them, trying to get the pretty people.

I finally found villagers I liked, but then I got the algae way too soon, and when I checked the difficulty setting, it was on 'hard.' I thought it would automatically be on easy, since that's where my other villages were.