Actually Ihave also thought about this. What if we got a island building tool where we could make hills and stuff, maybe change the ground from sand to grass and so on. Would be totally awesome! Imagine if you put you Pirate Hall in the middle on a large hill, and then you place some buildings below on a smaller hill, and then some other stuff on flat ground. Would look like an acropolis
On the Ipad 2 there are no shadows, too. Apple should release Metal for all devices. Or Midoki can "progam" shadows on devices without Metal.
Metal is optimized for the graphic ship that comes with the new models. The older models can't handle all that rendering, that is why there are no shadows on the older devices, it would lag horses.