Anyway, I've seen web material about new mods where the tech trees are altered to make choices between given paralel techs less obvious.
But...what about this concept: Rather than having to step through each step of the tree, we could allow research of parts in the tree you are not actually allowed to go yet. If you later on reach that techlevel, the techs you got earlier are just left out (like if you found them on an artifacts planet). To balance this there would have to be some multiplier on the techpoints required for the techs you normally wouldn't be able to get yet. Perhaps the penalty could be scaled up for every techlevel higher you get than you would normally be allowed to go?
Another idea is implementing some form of creative without the creative pick, that is, you can research things from techlevels you allready researched but also with some multiplier on techpoint costs. (it would be nice to get the first targetting computer while still getting research labs for instance, without requiring you to take the creative pick..
It is probably the case that some of this would lead to severe problems, not only balance-wise, but also technical-wise, this would have to be solved by adding some restrictions to the choice.
Anyway, if something like this would be possible it would give us tons of new strats! maybe it would also change the worth of some of the race picks
.. To be honest, i dont really think these are such good ideas myself, but its worth a discussion imho. perhaps some derivative of these concepts might be good ideas..
