It's a bug. Loading an old game may cause your Homecity to level down to its level during that game. I think it has been fixed in the last patches though, so you'll probably want to update your game to avoid such issues.
You can't recover your old homecity, but there are ways to get levels fast. One of them is starting a gane and using the Nova & Orion cheat (see
here) until you reach the maximum XP allowed in a game. It should take just a few games to get it back to 36. The other, fatest way is to just edit your Homecity's file:
To edit your civilization's level, go to My Documents\My Games\Age of Empires III\Savegame. There, look for the ".xml" file you want (it should have your HC's name... like sp_Berlin_homecity.xml, sp_London_homecity.xml). Open it with a text editing program (like Notepad) and edit the <*level> and <*skillpoints> tags. The first will change your XP/Level, and in the second you should put the number of available cards you want. Example: If you put 42, you'll have 42 points to spare in cards. It's better to do it before launching the game.
Note that this way you can level it up much further than 36, to have access to more cards and politicians.
ESO - Walker
>> Napoleonic Era --> Visit their Homepage!
"Holy *****" > Thunder (Ensemble Studios)
Retired from AoE3. But I do play AoK HD in Steam now and then.[This message has been edited by Cherub Walker (edited 10-25-2007 @ 12:00 PM).]