You know how you can build/design your palace, right? Well how about making it actually mean something? What I mean is, have it so each thing you add to your palace has some sort of effect. Maybe it would work like a wonder, except the effects would be much smaller. Say you add a moat and a draw bridge, how about that gives a defensive bonus to your capital? I don't know, but as it is now the palace does nothing and unless it serves some sort of purpose the whole thing should be scrapped so that improvements can be made on more important aspects of the game, like the AI or trade or whatever...