There's a ton of effort put into the tech tree. How did you decide how to design it? A lot of it is clearly a-historical. You didn't even fix the errors in the base game. I didn't come here to badmouth you though.
First, some of your technologies seem either too specific or redundant. Many of them seem chronologically in the wrong place.
Your definition of "basic tools" is my first question, in order of tech research. Basic tools have been used for at least a million years, and certainly before the first settled communities. Ritual and Mythology very likely predate any form of society by thousands of years- the earliest structure known to have been built is at Gobekli Tepe, some parts being close to 14000 years old and clearly intended for symbolic meaning. This structure predates any form of city, village or settlement by many thousand years, so it shows that these things were a big part of our ancient culture. Water Deities seems overly specific for a tech. If you want to lock the shrine up in it, I would say you'd be better off calling it something like Deities. Something more general than specifically oceanic beings. Burial too seems out of place. Ceremonial burial is known to have been practiced by Neanderthals, and likely arose as a practice to avoid bodies being desiccated by scavengers. Pottery was largely invented as a means to preserve stores of grain for cities, as in Mesopotamia. Pottery was likely known earlier, but in a crude form that was not practiced or perfected until this need arose. Mining is fine I think so far, although the first miners likely developed the skill while using bone and antler based hoes for tilling the ground, so the fact that we haven't come across "agriculture" (the basic requirement for settlement of any sort unless you count Catal Huyuk, but that is an isolate and a bad example for an actual city) is unsettling. Here we find agriculture, but I've already talked about that. Optics is dissapointing. True optic devices weren't invented for many centuries. It's a mistake Firaxis never corrected and I'm sad to see it in your game as well. Cuneiform is a primitive form of writing. It evolved over time and was only used in Mesopotamia, so having it as a technology is ridiculous. It is no less valid than any other alphabet, so having it as a separate precursor to writing is a bit silly. Sheep farming is also too specific. For any region without sheep it's a bit ridiculous to have to research it. You've now also placed "tribal council" after bronze working and masonry. Those techs clearly define our level of development in the "city" category, so the idea of calling it a tribe is odd. Crop rotation feels fishy, but I'm not an expert in that so I won't say it's necessarily wrong. Ivory carving- how is that a technology? What if you don't have ivory? On the grand scale of things, I don't think it should have any weight, especially as being fundamental to the advancement of technology. Seafaring. How is this drastically different from sailing? Weaving is much, much older than anything you have contemporary with it. If Epic Works is the technology of massive monument building, why are there wonders we've built before it? Dyes is not a technology. That is a commodity. Mineral and organic pigments have been known for at least 30 000 years. Administration is a vital task for any large population, any urban centre requires administration, as was present in Mesopotamia. Religion is a rather arbitrary technology as well. Many cultures had complex histories of their gods and deities for thousands of years. Their cultures aren't necessarily any less codified or defined than modern religions, so saying a religion is a technology that requires literature is odd. Tactics is not a technology, that's a tool that's been used since the first wars were fought. You're not implying war until this point involved throwing troops into a meat grinder until everyone was dead, are you? Medicine is much more ancient than this. Steel certainly doesn't require mobility, it requires advanced iron working processes such as mechanized bellows and blast furnaces. Bowmanship is not a technology. Pig farming is not a technology, I talked about this with sheep. Urbanism is not a technology. Metal Casting was used before bronze with copper, and most bronze and copper artifacts were cast into shape. Roman roads is just ridiculous, that's specifically Roman. Same with Danelaw.
The vast majority of your tech tree is painful to me. I feel like I got more and more upset as I wrote this. It's your mod and you can do what you like, the number of pages here seems to say it's popular but I wish you'd tried a bit harder with the design :/
