I posted about explore by touch on AppleVis, and thought I would share it here. I hope you find this helpful, especially if you're having trouble with explore by touch and knowing where things are in order to make sure buildings are able to connect to each other. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Let me see if I can provide some clarification, as there are a couple of issues here. First, as you have already discovered, standard VoiceOver gestures don't work all that well. If you turn VoiceOver off and use the built in speech, you will almost certainly have a better experience. Flicking, for example, does not follow the logical order that it does in most apps. I'm not entirely sure what happens when you flick, but you don't move from region to region, row by row, as we are used to. So, when navigating the map using explore by touch, turn VoiceOver off. Oh yes, the map refers to the area where the regions are, empty as well as those containing crystals, gas, etc.
Now to the issue of explore by touch itself. If the map does not appear on the screen, tap once with three fingers. This will take you to your colony base. Flick to the back button and double tap it. Flicking works well enough when you're in a region or option screen. It's only the map screen where flicking becomes unreliable. So, flick to the back button and double tap it, which will return you to the map. Now, if you explore the screen with one finger, you will be able to find regions. At first, regions will only appear in the middle. If you move your finger too close to the edges of the screen, it won't say anything or give you other feedback as to what's happening. Move your finger back toward the center of the screen to find regions again.
When you need to slide the map around to explore regions that aren't on the screen, here's how. Place two fingers on the screen. Then, while the speech is announcing how much money you have, gently slide the map away from the direction you want to explore. For instance, if there are hidden regions on the right side, slide the map to the left and they will move onto the screen and become visible. it's as though you've got a big piece of paper on a table, with a small frame, the screen of your phone, on top of it. Use two fingers to slide the paper around so the desired regions move into the frame. Keep your slides small at first, until you get used to how much the map moves. I hope this makes sense.
All of this works better if VoiceOver is not active. The only time I load VoiceOver while playing the game is when I get stuck in one of those ads that you can't close without using VoiceOver.
