Seconded. Otherwise, why even play the game if you want everything to be automated for you?

As can be seen, they can build a Palace and Pillar of Ashoka is grayed out. I've constructed a Palace, but it can only research Spes.

Hey, this is intended, so that there remains some attention needed to maintain your economy. Furthermore, putting more actions into maintaining your economy should reward you with a better economy. it may be still be changed, of course. If one considers this a bug, my preference would be is to remove it from the game.

Dev Repo has moved on to R29, which has some incompatibilities with R28 (minimap/type element in templates, for example). 

Yes, and I like it.