Loving this game.
I had a funny multiplayer lobby game. Everyone else plopped down pretty quick but I was taking a few seconds to try and find a decent spot. The other 3 players went science, science, and scavenger. The scavenger guy dropped on carbon, one science on iron, other on silicon. I took a few seconds to go ahead and explore the map with some quick clicks. Then I noticed something amazing. There was only a single patch of water on the whole map - 7 tiles in a little cluster. So I dropped a robotics HQ right in the center of it, with a 3 tile triangle remaining of it. I quickly claimed those 3 tiles. Got a nice setup going and covered up all the adjacent tiles to the 3 water tiles to prevent anyone from slant drilling them. I rushed a patent lab and got teleportation just to keep anyone else from getting it.
Now at this point you probably expect that I made a fortune selling water. Nope... I never pumped any the whole game, even when its price was super high and the other resources became cheap. Why? Because robots don't rely on anything water related for maintenance, but everyone else heavily relies on water.
Fuel? Requires water. Only alternative? Patent to use... water.
Food? Requires water.
Oxygen? Requires water.
Glass? Requires o2, which requires water.
And of course water itself for upkeep.
At first I was behind - I started a little bit late and wasted a bit of resources claiming all the water without regard to better real estate. But I managed to keep anyone from buying me out and thankfully nobody made a dedicated attempt to ruin me. And soon the price of water had skyrocketed, along with everything that requires it. Soon everyone was struggling to pay their upkeep and the cost of fuel to ship resources was crippling for the two science guys who had most of their buildings out on the resource deposits.