Why not just dump the entire sorcery tree into the spellbook?

Nope, you didn't just blow my mind.

But it still is a cute idea, as regrouping all magical research into one system could make it more doable to focus on magical research while ignoring mundane research.

I think what is annoying many players is the terminology of it. Calling research into magic a 'tech' does not tie in to fantasy fiction very well, at least not traditionally.

If you had two sections in the spellbook, one for spells, and one for meta-magic, I think it would solve that problem.

For example, in the meta-magic section, you would research higher spell levels, as well as the decyphering of other spell books.

Very much agree with this.

I was thinking maybe other ways to obtaining all your spells would be best through quests, but quests already need so much work as it is... We keep throwing 1 thing that doesn't feel right into another thing. (Spellbooks in Magic Tech seems doable for the time being, but Tech and Magic def sounds odd..)

I don't know about that. Most of the stuff I understand about wizardry in the classical fantasy setting is that it's based on one hell of alot of research. Hence why a powerful intellect is required to wield the forces of magic.

Or is that just me?

Still I think it should be as the OP says. There's a definate line between how magic should be researched and how mundane civic techs and warfare should be researched.

I don't know if I'm crazy about this. The way I look at it is that your researchers recover the lore, and then you arcanists figure out what it means. *shrug* Personal preference, I guess.

I think they should just dump the advanced book discovery into the arcane tree.

I like that buildings, magical equipment and other abilities come from research.

Personally, I have never been a fan of the dual tech tree in general. Not that I think there is anything inherently wrong with it, but more from a straight numbers standpoint. The normal tech tree has over 100 techs across all the tech trees, requiring thousands of research points to get to the final tech, and even then, there are repeatable techs at the end. The arcane tech tree has 50-60 spells (give or take I have not counted) and 5 level ups. If one really tried, they could research every spell in all the spell books before even finishing the normal tech tree and could simply destroy all of their arcane tech producing buildings. In my opinion, a good solution would not be to simply move the magic tech line from the normal tech tree. A much better solution would be to add more meta-magic improvements. For example, a repeatable per level power up line, which improved the spells of a particular level, would give the player more choice in how to spend his arcane research points. In fact, you could have a whole host of these types of meta-magic improvements, like power up, lower mana, lower stat req, increase range, lower maintenance, etc. This way, a player could choice to progress to better spells or simply spend his/her time improving their existing spells.

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meta-

1.

a prefix appearing in loanwords from Greek, with the meanings “after,” “along with,” “beyond,” “among,” “behind,” and productive in English on the Greek model: metacarpus; metagenesis; metalinguistics.

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There is a reason why metaphysics are called by that name...

LightofAbraxas is right about how arcane research works in the game.

I didn't mean to say that there shouldn't be magical research, only that it shouldn't be called a technology. Also, that it would suit it better to be in a separate section of the spell book.

I'm all aboard with this change. Spellbooks should absolutely fall under arcane research, not techs. That would also increase the incentive slightly to actually produce arcane research, which would in turn increase the magic available, and the magic in the world as a result.

That begs the question, if all the spellbooks fall under research (which I think should be the case) what do we do with the rest of the Magic tech tree? It seems like we could really separate out a lot of it into the other tech trees and drop the Magic tech tree altogether. 

So, this is how I would see it:

Shard Harvesting moves to the Spellbook; maybe give it a new name, then dump the Shard irmprovements and Temple into a Civilization spot.

Arcane Research moves to the Civilization/Imperium tech tree

Channeling moves to Warfare/Conquest

Sometimes a real mess needs some drastic first steps to clean up. I'd make magical research the only research and have all the mundane warfare, questing, and diplo 'techs' linked to objects like buildings with dependencies on each other, champions, quests, and a diplo system that had at least rudimentary logging built into it so that major past actions were an important part of the choices available for current actions.

Cross connections (like having quests that required interacting with an AI sov) would make it better still, and live up to that Grand Idea about getting fun complications from simple connections between subsystems.

Meta is also used to denote 'about' or 'of' (i.e. physics about physics, or, the physics of physics).

I can see LightofAbraxas' perspective on this, though I'm not sure the game makes it clear enough. At any rate, I think the fantasy role-playing ego of most players views magic as something personal to their character and abilities, which doesn't sit right with being handed arcane research from your mundane citizens.

Regarding magic research that is not directly related to spells, spell levels, spell power, and spell books, I think a simple way to solve it would be to rename the 'Magic' tech tree to something like 'Archaeology', or 'The Mysteries' (or something better), and leave the remaining magic related non-spell techs in there (while possibly fleshing it out with more techs).

I like the idea of having some research for each element that will boost the effectiveness of these spells. More thoughts on this later.

i'm with the OP broadly. if it was up to me sorcery and spell research would be the same thing. it just makes sense. personally i would remove the idea of specific spell research entirely and just research the books: once you get the book you know all the spells in it, even if you can't cast them. we would need many more books though (which i would be arguing anyway). i would also like a tech that increased your mana regen by 1/turn each time it was researched. then, finally, sorcery would have something that could compete with refined agriculture/housing.

After thinking about this for a while, I guess I'm a little bit more keen on it. There's just so freaking little to research in this area.

Duel tech tree systems seem to have gained considerable popularity since EWoM's magic path and Civ5's civics replacement.  Expect to see this a lot more in the future of tbs.

While I think a bit more diversity in the spell book could be an interesting idea, I generally disagree with your post. A lot of people on these forums have been pushing for a greatly expanded spells selection, yet I think that additional spells need to be well thought out before being added. In pre-1.1 Elemental, there were 72 different flavors of the similar spells, and most were either simply comparatively OP or not worth the casting cost. This is not to say that I love the minimized spell book, but I think it was toned back magic to be a little less over the top in some areas. I think the appropriate next step would be to simply expand what spell can do and how they function both strategically and with respect to non magical abilities.

The Logic here is strange. Just because 72 different flavours of similar spells is bad, does not imply 72 very different spells are bad. In fact, I would be okay with some spells that while not strictly weaker, are almost always never played because they are usually so. Take MOM again, there are some pretty weak spells, but it's not a big deal. MTG calls such spells/cards skill testers.

I like the OP idea. Furthermore why not add the Adventure/Dominion tree to Arcane research, creating two distinct paths.

Mundane path of inventing future technology consisting of Civilization, Warfare and Diplomacy.

Arcane path of discovering mysteries of the past consisting of Spell Research,  Magic and Adventure.

Also "Science" = "Knowledge".

Nevermind. I just had a mind vomit and forgot to clean it up. 

The only thing I agree here with is the elemental spellbooks should fall under arcane research.  I have said this numerous times.  How do a bunch of tech junkies read and study magic when they don't know nothing about magic.

What they need to do is change the arcane buildings into something like arcane focal pointor something like that.  The only people that should be able to research and study magic are people born with the innate ability to cast magic.  These focal points could be built in cities would increase the Sovs ability to study and learn magic.

Hell you could even take the arcane focal point building and place them in the magic tech branch.  This could be played off as the tech junkies found these mysterious blueprints that help arcane users increase their ability to study magic.