There is a feedback on the world creation screen. There is a progress bar that advances as it goes through its creation cycle. If that bar isn't doing anything, the game isn't doing anything.
The game currently (version 0.98) has serious issues with restarting within the same session, whether it is new game or just loading a save of a previous turn. Best thing to do is to just exit the game all the way back to windows desktop, and then restart the game. Although even then, the game exhibits certain issues with memory and still hangs or crashes that can only be truly fixed by rebooting the machine itself.
