How do you "win" with non-warfare societies?  I am particularly confused what winning in a Adventure society would look like.

I believe at some point the devs mentioned a "Master Quest" that if completed, would win you the game. 

I like the general idea, but I am confused on a couple points. Why is Mordor the example for Adventurer? I would think Mordor is a better example of a warfare based society. When I think of a purely adventuring "society," I think of the "going Gandalf" idea from back before the beta. One guy (or girl), no cities, collecting a party of other adventurers, completing quests, etc. You seem to have a very different idea of what an adventuring society is.

I don't really like the whole ranking bonuses idea, but then, I don't really like how games will give you a ranking at all. If I do the necissary scouting, I should know how I stand militarily, etc. But anyway, my personal issues aside, if you're already first in an area, why do you need a bonus? To be even more in first? 

I don't think this is the way to go. If you invest in one category, the research costs go up, and the alternative categories will become much cheaper and more tempting. I think it's a question of priorities and adapting to situation, not mindlessly investing in one category through the entire game.

I’ve difficulty presenting the core idea but your questions pinpoint where I need to fill in.  

In most Strategy game, there is essentially 1 kind of gameplay.  Fill up all the land surrounding your 1^st city, until you think you almost has spread too thin.  Then you buy you some time by developing your might/magic power in the mid game.   For me this is only 1 kind of gameplay.  The common thread of all this, is that you need to develop your Civilization (tech) first because it is the dominant tree, especially in the beginning.  During the mid-game, you can branch into a Civ/War or Civ/Magic to prepare acheiving the victory conditions.  (Civ -> Civ/War or Civ -> Civ/Magic).   I do not want to branch out from a Civ start in every game

All 5 tech trees should be designed in a way that if you invested every single point of research into the same tree, play smartly, you still end up having equal footing with all other players.   

Take the war tree as an example, in this game I want to stick with from the beginning to the end.   Because all my tech is war, my society cannot afford a huge population (like the Civilization tree).    If I capture tons of new cities, I cannot manage it well.   Civilians are dying due to lack of food, poor health, and lack of Art/culture whatever.  But I don’t care; I may even raze them for my benefit.  

Instead of getting a huge population, the war tech tree is designed in a way that the more I win, the more powerful I become.   My war related buildings/units/heroes get more & more powerful due to the increasing Ranking Bonus.    The war tech is designed to guarantee that I’ll get enough money to keep it going as long as I keep winning, maybe from looting, selling slaves etc.   My concern aren’t try keeping a huge population; a small one and a few cities will do.  Being war oriented society, it is easy to draft new soldiers willingly or not.  Some civic tech like “Slavery of human”, or “Drafting” will reside in War tree instead of Civic tree.

I can later go from War -> Adventurer tech if I see fit.   It is completely flexible to mix & match anyway you want.  Maybe I think a calvary & monster troop will give me better result, I can do that.

Your answer is correct as ever, pal.  However, it is also a balance question (design), or a judgment question (player).   

Using the same War society example, you are at a point in time that all other tech seems cheap when you have already heavily invested in the war tree.   Which path will bring you the best benefit?  

Say the next cheap Civic tech is Aqueduct.  Do you really need it?  Maybe all your castle population is still too small to get the benefit of the aqueduct.   Maybe you don’t have the money to build it once researched.  When your society is specialized for such a long time, even free tech from other branch does not offer much to you, because your existing infrastructure/population/situation has little use of it.

I'll play devil's advocate and say I'm going the Civ route. Even if I had no breakthroughs in warfare, I would still gain weapons from exploration. And most of my population could be used in a mob to overwhelm a better equipped army. I would still have basic magic and basic diplomacy, relying on exportation of my vast resources at low cost to other players that don't have my civilization's knack for accumulation. I could probably even trade with the Diplomacy players for weapons. I could get heroes that have desserted another player with the prestige from my massive infrastructure. The possibilities are really quite expansive.

I assume any other tree would work about the same.

Adventuring as I understood the description would give a great number of bonuses to the other areas of play. The riches and lore found by adventuring could give you unique breakthroughs in any of the technology trees. It sure would be cool to have a Kingdom full of magically and technologically random advancements that build a unique way of living in the elemental world.

For that matter, I would feel personally gratefull if the Empire's magic tree allowed me to create undead farmers to till my fields and have control over the weather instead of building some obsene aquaduct.

I have seen no evidence of mercenary armies in the game. Where did you get this idea?

Obviously it is an exageration to say I would only research one tree. I do believe that it makes sense to be competitive even if I only focus on a single tree. This should be a viable strategy that has benefits and weaknesses but it should never be dwarfed by a middle ground strategy. How would that be fun?

As to the adventuring example, it should be accurate that the highly developed heroes should be able to rally a group of "clubmen" to become decent fighters, moral wise, but without the benefits of combined arms and the other things attributed with military training. You would win a direct battle but a war against strong heroes would not be easy. As to arming and magic, it could conceivably be attained through adventuring as I understand the process.

My main counterpoint is that the more viable extreme strategies are, the more varied and fun IMO the game will be.

I'm more behind that knowing you aren't for exclusive tech trees. In which case I largely agree with you except for a few caveats. I still think that a specialized nation should have weaknesses where more generalized nations would not. Part of the strategy with a specialized nation would be to manage your weaknesses and to utilize your strength to your best advantage.

I guess. I just feel that good Civilization is sort of a no-brainer. It influences the growth of all four other tech paths. Attaching a win condition to it just feels unnecessary.

This is so well said, this is the core of the idea.  The OP post is an attempt to prevent every game is a “Middle ground” game.   You can do a middle ground one, as always by using a few tech trees.     But if you only want 1 tree this game, you can.   Because if you play it right, all of its extreme strength &  extreme weaknesses of that tree are still balanced, wrt other 4 trees.

If you found that your opponent starts exploiting your 1 tree’s weakness, you are then face with the choice of branch out or stay true to the tree.   It can be a interesting choice. 

 No, this is against the spirit of the suggestion.  The 5 trees are designed that the Civic tree is not the dominant tree (especially in the beginning).   The economy in Civic tree is Internal.   When you don’t have lots of population/cities yet, you are not going to be super rich.   Probably Civ player will have great markets and taxation system that work well with large pop.

 The kind of $ you got will be at the similar level to the War tree player, as long as the War player is winning the wars, developing a war based economy.   His loot, ransoms, or sell of weapons/armor, will fulfill its money needs.    Each tree will have its own specific type of Economy, a specific way of getting $.      

 For the adventurer’s economy, money/resource/weapon/magic/etc mostly comes from adventurers’ loot from dungeons (as seanw3 said).  Heroes like to join the empire because it is their lifestyle.  It the mid or late game, their tree specific tech will allow the SOV taxing the Giant Spider/Trolls etc.   So the more lairs a SOV has control, the more revenue/tech/etc he gets. 

 (I have no idea how a magical economy should look like, any one help?)

 I want to change the fact that in most TBS games, you got more $ because you have more City/Population.   I really want that changed.   You can still do that when you focus on the Civ tree, but now you’ve 4 other ways to earn your keep. 

 seanw3, I like how you say it for the pure Civic play.   Low cost, poorly equipped but numerous ‘farmers’ are going to protect they homeland no matter what.   They just overwhelm, and they die a lot when defending.  They probably have high morale defending and low morale attacking.  They probably have trouble dealing with Wizards from the Magic tree, due to area of effect damage spells, but may be the peasants can overwhelm too.    This is how they fight! 

 No, there are significant difference btn Adventurer and a Civ/War society.  Civ/War society is human based.   Adventurer society is monster based, its settlers do not establish city, it establish lairs.   The SOV has a bit less control to them as they will carry out raid by themselves (as neutral), or sometimes just plain don’t listen.   The SOV can thus only recruit monstrous troop from lairs in large number.    For a pure Adventurer empire, the 1^st and other captured cities are probably the only human cities.    These cities are heaven for adventurers, as they will be surrounded by tons and tons of lairs.

 The more I think/talk about it, the more I like the whole idea.   I really hope this can make it to the retail game.  If not, it can be the basis of a mod.  Considering the huge scope of the mod, it will be lot of work and thus easily fail.   Hopefully I can make an influence here, it will made into the retail game.

You should be able to get money from underdeveloped cities. It wont be as much, but it would be enough for the goals of a differently focussed tree. The true question we need to ask the frog and maybe the gorilla is:

Are there alternate ways to gain money and production and if so are they designed as supplements to a moderately refined civilization tree, or are they viable as a sole means of advancement?

As to magic focusing, I would think one would need quite a monopoly on shards to go this route. I would probably get some sort of alchemy in the late game, but I would think that I would need to attract wizards and such with prestige and money to advance their magical goals enough to turn mana into gold. Magic can however, supplement battle, adventuring, and economy with a little creativity (given what I know from studying the froggonian hypothetical future). The key with magic is to get early allies and resources to take on a support capacity to another player. You can also of course go the seclusion route, as many masterful wizards do, but it will leave you with perhaps less resources under your control.

In my opinion a strong command of magic mixed with lesser amounts of lair adventuring and provincial weaponry would be the least counterable strategy against a middleground player like MagicwillNZ or an extremist like Climber. I would use my magic to weaken and delay the enemy while I attack their undefended cities and resources with summoned creatures and fast light infantry/spiders.

The possibilities are really endless because with each combination of research there are a mulititude of strategies.

It has just occured to me that a heavy civics focus would lend to a very defensible empire. Massive spires with even a few bowmen could forseeably stop any invading army, aside from a very siege orientated war focus. I am excited to see how things work out balance wise.