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If the issue only persists with ShadowPCF enabled, it might be a totally different issue. Perhaps we can sort this out on IRC?

I like (love?) the Uffington white Horse, but that might be because AoE 1 had that (or stuffs that looked like it anyway) and I remember 5-year old me thinking they looked amazing and were the most mysterious thing ever. Frankly, I still think so. There's not a single piece of ancient art that looks that modern in my eyes (looks like something Picasso might have drawn). edit: can't find any screenshots of the AoE 1 stuff, but I'm sure I haven't dreamt it…

It didn't actually change, I just fixed it. I still have quite a bit of work on the AI, in the end (naval stuffs remains semi-buggy and unoptimized, and the economy is not quite as good as it used to be as I've changed stuffs semi-blindly). Historic_Bruno, I agree about the errors, I'll have to look into them. The "wrong spot" one is annoying as right now the AI can't do anything about it, really. Fixing this means making plans resilient (probably easy to do) and means making the game send messages to the AI that a building placement has failed. This is more advanced behavior (tied with allowing the AI to scout the planned area beforehand for, say, Civil centers) and not started yet.

part of the justification i came up with for the Hanging Gardens when i proposed them was that they were actually built for Nebuchadnezzer's wife, who was a Persian

but weren't the Achaemenid Persians Zoroastrians? (read: monotheists)

I just realized that the 4 points I posted on how to implement the fundamentals of this idea aren't really correct. Point 1 (to remove possibility to recruit units) isn't true. Instead another approach is needed. Here is a new plan (that might be easier to implement) on how to make this work, and it takes another approach: (points 1-3 are new) Create population limit for each unit-type. Allow structures to raise population-limits for special unit-types (just like normal houses do). Allow to make structures deploy units when built or upgraded. Possibility to upgrade buildings. The structures model should also be changeable by each upgrade. The size and shape of the building would maybe grow by each upgrade, but the building must reserve some space so that you can't upgrade a building because there is no space for the building to upgrade. Something that helps the player to know which buildings aren't used to their fullest capacity. However this is not really that important at this stage. Also, is there any way to remove the shroud of darkness by changing some scripts? I've been looking around for a while and I cant figure it out, I've managed to set "reveal map" to true by default, but then the fog of war is then turned of too, which is not what I'm trying to do. Any ideas? Below is my take on what the game should look like. I'll try to explain/figure it out by defining it in as general terms as possible first, and then go into details. Please note that this is work in progress. STRATEGY Every action a player takes must be a strategic or tactical decision. If an action (or an element in the game) is not based on strategy or tactics, it should not exist. Hunting is a example of a action that is not strategical or tactical (enough). Each strategic or tactical decision must be important. The player shouldn't have to care about a decision that easily can be "regretted" (example: researching "servants" can easily be "regretted" by adding 25% more workers on metal gathering instead of stone gathering) or if the decision is insignificant (example: having women work with gathering food and men with gathering wood and stone). THE GAME Length of a game: A normal game between two players should take around 30 minutes (20 - 40 minutes). A game can be divided into three major phases, the early game, the middle game and the endgame. The early game (phase 1) is when both players make their first expansions but no real battles emerges yet. In the middle game (phase 2) battles are fought and the players continue to expand. In the endgame expanding isn't a central objective anymore and many resources start to deplete. In the endgame the battles are large and central in the gameplay. No shroud of darkness. Doesn't look that good and it is actually quite annoying. The early game should be like the opening in chess - the moves you do are crucial and must take your opponents moves into account (and also the terrain). Otherwise there would be no real "opening" because you don't have sufficient information to base your decisions on. The "opening" you would play would then only be based on simple factors as if you prefer to play defensively or offensively. Instead with no shroud of darkness the player could base his "opening" on the terrain. Also by doing so that you always can see your opponents centres, you would have to take that into account when choosing which "opening" you should play. This would then be a much more interesting and advanced decision, which is necessary considering that there otherwise isn't much to do in the early game. RESOURCES The only units that should be able to gather resources are "workers". Citizen soldiers makes the game to chaotic and doesn't really work that well with the basic idea of units being "deployed" instead of "trained". By having worker only units the game would be much clearer. Food as a resource doesn't have any strategic of tactical importance since units aren't trained. It just isn't needed. Gathering food has also always been complicated and requires some micro-management. Metal should be a very scarce resource and the players should really have to fight to get their hands on it. There could be different types of metal with different values, these are copper, silver and gold. Only in the middle game should you start gathering metal. If your opponent has far more metal than you, you must try to win quickly as metal allows for some better units in the endgame. No mills. The goal is that wood should be a resource that gets harder and harder to get by, especially if you don't expand quickly enough. This is because trees disappear and for each tree the distance and time to gather wood increases. Stone is a resource that has a relatively linear gathering-speed. However, in the endgame it is unsually the first resource to be depleted. Worker limit around 5 for stone and metal. The GUI should however suggest the optimal number of workers considering the limit and distance from closest dropsite. EXPANDING AND CENTRES Each centre deploys a number of workers. Each upgrade costs as much and deploys as many workers as a new centre. To build a new centre you need a minumum of 5 workers. This does so that you can't "sneak-build" a centre. It also adds more dynamics to the game. In the early game the player will have a choice of either upgrading his first centre, or building a new centre. The reason you wan't to expand early on is because you don't want all the resources around your most central centre, that is the most secure centre, to deplete. It should be possible to build structures at any territory. However when building on own territory it get built by itself as if one worker works on it. On neutral territory the structure must be built with workers. Structures on enemy territory decays. WARFARE ... ...