I definitely think the game can be improved, but if you use the right strategies you can definitely do quite well! I don't think linking is allowed, but I'm currently working on video guide on the minigame, so will definitely make that into a thread guide on the forum as well
I've completed 30 games so far, and I've been able to pick up 68% of the goods. If I ignore the first few days when I didn't really know what I was doing, that is closer to 75% of the goods. In raw numbers, I've picked up 218/322 goods, or 7.3/10.7 goods per game! I have three more games of my first settlement, so that's around 240 goods over the settlement, don't quite know if that's good or not. I don't like that the 4x boost doesn't apply, it will make the game less and less important as your settlement speed goes up and up. Anyways, my basic strategy is simple:
1) Try to open a big area of empty tiles, this will give you a lot of information to work with. Best way to do it is to open the corner tiles, then the middle tiles of the top and bottom row UNTIL you unlock an open area. When you do move on to step 2 immediately.
View attachment 6156
2) "Solve" that area - If you're lucky you'll be able to determine all the goods around the area, but you will sometimes have 50/50 situations as well. When you do, give the 50/50 a go, it will often help you determine the other goods around the are
The numbers are the order I clicked on the tiles:
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3) If you have more attempts, jump back to step 1), or if you only have a few attempts left and know a few goods are behind a previously opened tile, have a go at finding those goods