from the feedback I have been reading recently I believe there has been some misunderstandings about our plans.
WTP will not completely be ruined by a few new features over several releases.
I think I share at least part of the blame for the misunderstanding. Particularly regarding the tech tree I wrote in a way where I expect the reader to have some understanding of how you create a mod. I can see how it can create all sorts of misunderstandings for people who don't know what goes in which file inside a mod.
Think of it this way. Imagine you have a pile of lego blocks. You take some and build something. Not only do you only use say 20%, the ones you use can be put together in a near infinite number of ways. Then somebody adds a lot of blocks of different shapes to the pile and say "can you make something else now?". You then use a combination of the new and old blocks and build a spaceship, but while you are given that option, you can still build the house you built from the start because none of the blocks have been removed and if or how you use the new blocks is completely up to you.
The same goes with modding. We have one dll file, which is written in C++. The mod contains a bunch of xml files, which makes use of the features offered in the dll file to shape the game. To compare it to the lego analogy, the dll file is the pile of blocks while the xml files are where you actually build something.
What I have done is saying "I can add support for this in the dll file with a reasonable amount of work. Can we figure out if we can use it in xml to improve the game?". This means what I wrote isn't directly what I want the future mod to be. Instead it's an input to the debate regarding what we can accomplish through xml and which direction we want to take the mod.
For instance based on what I wrote we could add a tech, which reduces the build time of farms by 1 turn. The very same dll code can be used to make a founding father or leader trait make pioneers build roads twice as fast. It can also be used to make an era make cutting down forests faster. This is all reuse of the same C++ code, which is configured differently in xml.
Nothing has been decided and I'm not sure it would be a good idea to add everything I wrote. However I had to write it because first step in figuring out what we want to set as our goals would be to figure out what we can do from a programming point of view.
Also a worst case scenario, we can add a game option, which provides all techs to all players or gives a special tech, which unlocks everything or something like that. It would requiring balancing two different conditions, which wouldn't be ideal for the modders, but I think it would be technically possible and an option if we end up in the for and against groups for adding techs to the game. It would be better to figure out a single solution everybody agrees on though.
We don't want to ruin the mod, but at the same time we don't want to not be able to improve anything because somebody might not like the change. It's a tricky situation, which is one of the reasons we need a public debate on what we actually want to do.
