- The Global Ranking was still available from the "Global" menu, even when Thatched Houses were not researched yet. It will be locked now until then.
Why? This will make it so annoying to check out cities of other players... Luckily there is another workaround, but it's much less convenient than using the ranking list. Kind of don't want to mention it, because if that's removed you'd have to spend the additional 18 FPs to check out someone's city, or in other words wait up to 18 hours (you can buy some FPs, but definitely not all of them).
What's the harm in keeping it around? Why shouldn't a new player be able to check out the rankings? And how many new players actually check it out before getting much further into the game?