I see this as the turning point where Dawn of Civilization changes from 'modmod of RFC' to 'Leoreth's favourite mod / Civilization as he wants it to be', if that makes sense.
There is nothing wrong with that; it's your mod, after all, and you've done outstanding things.
Without being too presumptuous, but that's what it's been from like 1.8 on. I deliberately changed the tagline from modmod to spiritual successor with 1.13 and alluded to things like this in the introductory paragraph. There also was a poll a while back where at least a plurality was in favor of departing further from the basic assumptions of the mod.
I, also, am against this, or at the utmost, ambivalent; this tech tree seems more restrictive, less ironed out - and indeed, a step back, I would posit - and especially considering the fact that this mod is about history... Yeah. I gave it a day's thought - I saw this thread before anyone had replied, and I've looked at this tech tree in detail in the past - but I really don't see it working without a year (or more) of ironing out... And even then, I believe you'd be slowly moving back into the direction of Beyond the Sword. I suspect that the symmetric structure of this tech tree isn't maintainable, needing to go through increasingly larger hoops.
Actually I had a similar reaction when I first encountered this tech tree. The rigid nature seemed like a neat feature for its own sake, but after reviewing it in more detail and playing with it I was impressed with how well everything fits together. A lot of things that feel out of context or not era appropriate in the BtS tech tree fit much better here in my perception. There is also the fact that it has more techs and is more granular. I think the smaller increments in elements in the game becoming available feels better. Again, all of those additions slots into each other quite nicely in my opinion.
And I don't really think the "tried and true" old tech tree is doing its job as well as is assumed here. There's already some stuff added to the mod that the current number of techs can barely handle, and consider that aspects like an expansion of the unit roster (especially at sea, but partially also on land) are being discussed and are both probable and apparently popular. I was already putting plans and documentation for things like this together behind the scenes and to me it felt more like a construct threatening to collapse under its own weight.
I recognize that the tech tree is one of the central elements of the game and that there is a lot of value in having it being well known and memorized. But I don't think this tree is that much of a departure from the current one once you're used to it, because it still follows much of the same familiar beats. In some cases, existing techs are split into multiple concepts that were previously subsumed under one name, in others techs moved to eras where their concept makes more sense. But I feel it's all very intuitive.
This is a radical change and I expected skepticism and pushback, that's a natural reaction to radical change. That does not mean that the end result must be bad, so I hope everyone gives the outcome a chance.
Again, that is perfectly fine, because this is your mod. I'm not complaining. I would, however, inquire as to the possibility of keeping a branch around with the original tech tree. Perhaps people from this community could keep that up, if it'd be too much work for you (I don't know how Git works, how feasible it is to keep two branches that have a different tech tree)?
All previous release tags will stay in place so you can always stay on 1.14 without problems. Consequently, it's easy for another modder to create a fork on 1.14 and continue from there as a modmod.
But that sounds like some amount of work assuming this modmod intends to stay in synch with other changes I'm making on the base, so I'm not going to do this myself.
They are yet another stone tossed in poor neglected England's path. You know when the height of the British Empire was? Late 19th century. You know, a little after Canada's spawn takes away a seizable portion of their territory. Never mind that if you play England for UHV you often don't even get to see much of the 19th century, which is just completely against historical flavor. It's as if Spain's UHV would trigger before Optics, or America's before the 20th century. I don't need a global British Empire until the end of the game, I just want it to last until the early 20th century at least, as it did in real life.
Actually, agreed on the scope of the English UHV.
