For the Caesar and Pharaoh Olympics, I wrote little programs to turn buildings off and on in a saved-game file. This makes it possible, for example, to build a walled city, then disable walls so that the player cannot build any more walls, or to build two trireme wharves then not allow any more. It also means that if you're testing an episode and suddenly realize that you had to allow horse ranches, you can modify a saved game and continue.

This only affects the buildings listed on the "Building Allowed" tab. If there is interest, I may be able to extend it to sanctuaries.

I have written one of these for Zeus, but I would like a couple of people to try it out before I make it generally available. Please email me if you are willing to do this. I'm happy to share the source code with any Visual C++ programmers.

Contest organizers can relax -- I know how to detect files that have been modified with this program.

I at first thought that a .pak file was required for a single-episode adventure, but to my surprise one of my .sav files continued to work even after I deleted the .pak file. This may mean that .sav files alone will work for short contests.