I was spamming Strelsi against German cavarly and War Wagons, and somehow getting the upper hand(odd, since the Strelet is weak against cavarly, which is the Germans specialty), and just as I got to the Imperial Age, the game decided to delete my Town Center. It was gone, just gone. The minimap still showed it there, but there was a patch of empty land that looked like there used to be a building there. No way they could have snuck troops there, either.
The Computer is a Cheating Bastard indeed.
Age of Empires 3. Got them back next game, by zerg-russian their town, overrunning their cav, then letting my men have fun with their settlers while mortars and falconets tore up their buildings. No, Frederick, you may not resign.
High five for great taste in games.
As for me, I decided to ramp AI difficulty up a notch to see how I measured up and how well I can Serpent rush them still to win the 1v1. Picked Freedom, which is overall not one of the most rush friendly maps - it has plentiful resources, is wide open and bases are rather far from each other. Resources help me too of course, but this means you can't starve people as well as you can on some of the more unorthodox maps.
Anyway, I went for a rather conservative setup, two peasant huts two taverns, trained a bunch of swordsmen, waited until I had 4 or so and raced them across the map. I arrived just in time to see the AI having a Musketeer mount their freshly-erected watchtower overlooking their entire economy, what amounts to eight peasants tending to their rice, some bucketing the water and a few more in training. I inflicted some losses, but not enough to keep the attack going with reinforcements, so I built an Alchemist's Hut to crosstrain a few swordsmen into raiders and went at it again. I did manage to destroy their watchtower, but they did manage to gather an army, wiping my troops pretty soundly.
At this point, I could have fought on certainly, probably even winning, but I wanted to practise rushing and that rush was for all intents and purposes failed. I would have had to catch up on economy hard and turtle, so I resigned the game.
After that game, though, I went for a second one with the same setup, but tightened my timings and went for the attack earlier, with only three swordsmen (plus constant reinforcements). That rush succeeded in striking before they had their watchtower up and manned, crippling their economy and winning in the process. I suspect they could have repelled the rush by zerging my attackers with their peasants, though. At least initially. It should be noted that the AI probably cheated on costs, though.