OK, thanks for trying and feedbacking, It seems I developped this mod only for you... ^^
Well, Let me answer :
some techs should require one or more other techs to be researched
That would make some techs more important than others, and I tried to make all techs relevant.
I should maybe explain more what the techs are about in the pedia part. But for the compass/engineering, I do not think that being aware that a magnetic needle shows North requires great engineering skills. Neither did the vikings for example, who were not particularly known for their engineering skills, but could reach Groenland, and later Vinland...
But indeed, some of the techs, alone, might feel a little weird.
As for the realistic part, you might have noticed that there are some "weird" technologies, that skating, that allows land boats, totally unrealistic, but that add a little layer of flavor in my opinion.
all towns had names like "BaseCity1" (that may be due to game-mechanics)
Indeed, this is like the basic coemetic type of civilisations, this is for flavor, and an incentive for you to rename your city as you like, although I quite understand that it can feel like a pain...
The gameplay in the beginning was extremly slow (each research takes like 36 turns).
Indeed, I could change this, but you can use this time to explore your environment, and choose your next tech wisely...
How you develop your civ is then up to you, will you specialize in some environment, be a jack of all trades, being able to survive in almost all terrain types, will you try to expand militarily...? But the thing is that in the end, there are things that your civilisation won't be able to do, and others that it will be able to do. And the civ next to you will be able to do others things you might or might not be able to do yourself.
In future releases I'd like to see techs related to tundra-tiles and ice-tiles.
Indeed, tundra is really left alone for now, but I started working on ice and snow improvments (like skiing for example). I will keep working in this direction for a few techs from now on.
Thanks again for your interest.
Take care
