Re: AOE palette bug-
AOE1 and AOE2 use 8-bit indexed colour palettes. What this means is it get's to choose 256 colours fro a larger set and then use those.
The issue is that, with windows and 256 colours, 256 colour modes work by way of asking applications what colours they need. Applications can then say to windows "Well, I would like these colours, but at the very least, I need these ones" and Windows will do it's best to preserve the palette colours for all applications.
AOE and AOE2, for example, have their own set of 256 colours that they use for everything. Normally, since it 's a full-screen, foreground application, this has no issue, because nothing else is usually holding colours hostage in the palette.
Windows 7 (and Windows Vista as well) I believe, however, do. There are some palette colours that Windows Explorer (eg. the taskbar/start menu application) refuses to let go of, which makes for weird magenta outlines and bits of weird colours.
The solution for windows Vista and 7 is to kill explorer.exe before you launch it. I personally use a batch file:
taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires II\empires2.exe"
echo press any key to restart explorer...
pause
start explorer.exe
This will kill explorer, start the game, and then when you finish wait for you to press a key in the command window, and then restart explorer. This same technique is required for appropriate visuals in many older games that use 256 colour modes. (Command & Conquer being just one other example).