http://wiki.earthempires.com/index.php/Gameplay_changes
Lots of changes really... but none that are Earth shattering ;) pardon the pun ;) One of the biggest I still think is the unified account for all servers that is persistent...
Explore rates are the same as the last set of mehul changes (2004? 2006? i can never remember when those happened)... 40A base tho, 48 for rep, dropping to 6 normal, 7 rep by the end
Ghost acres are one of the biggest changes; I always thought that removing ghost acres was what really killed inter-alliance hitting.
Recently we added some fancy AJAX to attack page so attacking in war is retarded-fast (but mainly so you don't have to keep refreshing the attack page, for server load purposes)
SO's of course... that was part server load, part market-transfer & market bot prevention, part distributing demand across the day to smooth those daily peaks & valleys from lack of players in certain timezones
recalling goods was one people wanted; useful for destocking & war, but i mostly use it for when i screw up pricing like 300M bushels at market price =/
2B bug removal - ya basically lets you dump past that, but it's prohibitively expensive to run turns at that level... unless you *know* the bushel price is about to crash and you're still stocking :) then just take the losses hehe
dropped military expenses a bit, increased food eaten a bit...
Lots of fancy FFA and express stuff from Slagpit :) and also massive anti-cheat0r tools from Slag as well ;) I'm glad I didn't have to code those...