I was thinking a bit about Elemental yesterday, and suddenly I came up with a research idea (might have been suggested before, though) that I think would be really cool and realistic, but maybe too time-demanding to implement:

First off, each major category would have to be split in four, maybe with the exception of adventuring which could be sort of a side thing. For example (example is an important word here):

Civilization: Agriculture, Production, Civics, Prestige? (perhaps?)
Warfare: Weapons, Armor, Logistics, Training
And so on...

Now, this is an idea I have seen here before, but what if these subcategories were given multipliers depending on how your empire was built? For example, the agriculture subcategory of civilization would get a research bonus depending on the amount of farms or gardens (or similar) you had in your civilization. Let's say you have 10 regular research points, and 2 farms and 2 gardens. A bonus would then apply to your agricultural research, perhaps a 10% bonus (1% per garden, 4% per farm), for a total of 10 * 1.10 = 11 research points when researching agriculture.

I think a system like this would be pretty awesome, because it reflects how research occurs in reality. In reality your army wouldn't get any better weapons without smiths actively working with producing weapons, right? Those scholars at the universities can research all they want, but without actual experience in weaponcrafting, your empire would not exactly be at the forefront of it. Same with agriculture: without any actual farms or farmers, the scholars wouldn't be able to test their findings, and they would have nothing to base their research on.

I think this would add depth to the research part of the game, and also make different participants in a match really develop their own culture and focus during the course of the game. If you only focus on agriculture, for example, your empire would be the best at it. If you only focus on armor, your empire would have the best armor (infinite techs would have to be used in every subcategory, instead of every "supercategory" like it is now).

Whaddya think? Just throwing it out there.