I agree wholeheartedly, I've been saying this for a while.

Where's the 1D-2D-3D-4D phasing?

Where's the teleporters?

Where's the terror stars?

I read in the notes somewhere Antimatter Missiles are supposed to be back in, but why oh why every time we go to the "future" do options and tech vanish?

Why are we more limited?

Where's the advances?

The adaptation?

The ability to turn useless dead planets into something of value, or at least less of an eyesore?

ah, I haven't gone far enough, then.  All my games in 5.3 have crashed way before that, and the one I started yesterday is bugged too.

Then it is a real problem that it is that short.  But it has nothing to do with tech specialization, it is a different issue, imho

Sorry but that is nonsense, there aren't that many Specializations, half of the tech tree is a gross exageration.

Another silly exageration, you should avoid these as it prevents people taking your point seriously.

If you can research all specializations they literally become pointless, seriously just dump them and add the current ones as normal techs on the tech tree. That is in essence what you are asking for when you say you want to be able to research them all.

Making people choose in this way gives you an extra strategic choice to make, and in a stratergy game extra strategic choices are good.

As for the length of the tech tree, so mod it and add more techs yourself, or mod it and get rid of the specializations and add them back in as normal techs.

The way they have made specilizations work now is also great for modders in general as it allows them an extra choice in structuring custom tech trees.

I know not everyone supports this and there is no design decision you can make that some people won't object to but it actually makes the game richer, not poorer in possibility IMO so I support them in this.

That was with intent in " "

Just to show what I mean

I've debated about this with myself.  I do like long tech trees.  I also like the idea of mutually exclusive specializations.  After all... its called specialization.  Though there is inconsistency in the language.  A specialization seems more likely to be exclusive.  An Optimization, on the other hand, need not be.

The tech trees will certainly grow over time with the addition of other features (like espionage, etc).  But as it stands, there aren't enough techs for those playing on a larger map which generally takes more time to win.  You could make research slower through the settings.  However, this also changes the "feel" of the game to feel slower, rather than give the player more to do or more to decide.

My personal preference would be... make the ones called specialization mutually exclusive.  Make the ones called optimization available.  Add smaller incremental research bonuses.  Some research gives a boost too quickly... like the diplomacy tech gives 1 diplomacy point... which is a lot. It could easily be split into a Two-part research.

Anyway, just my two cents.

mmhh I think my english is simply not enough

I like the specialisation but I don't like that it makes short tech trees shorter...

simply thats it...

Sorry I don't see how that will reduce the total number of techs if you move them to being techs rather than specializations maybe I'm just not following you intention here though.

On the point about how many techs there are I agree it would be great to have more and I might mod my own race with a much longer tech tree, although that will unbalance the others. I just think the specilizations locking once you choose one is a good design decision. I think having longer tech trees in general would be great though. But keep in mind that the game has a tech tree for every race even though many of them are repeated across different tech trees that's still more total techs than a game like this normally has.

I love race specific tech trees by the way that was the best part of ToA too.

You could, of course, download my mod and have the research rate set at 25% (or 10%). Then you won't get everything for a long time. (Horray for self-promotion)

But yes, this doesn't address the issue of the amount of specializations and techs. It just seems like there are so few techs - if you start as Intuitive, you can get more than half the way through Age of Expansion, maybe all the way through if you pick the 12 lowest techs. And I'm not saying 'nerf Intuitive'.

I tried to do a straightforward 'delete everything in SpecializationDefs' and 'remove Specialization lines in TechDefs', but it crashes when starting a new game. I'll take a more in-depth look at it though.

Reading TechDefs.xml I noticed Tech Point which is always 1 perhaps this counts as one per category so the specialization. Perhaps making them all 0 will disable specialization?

Oh well I was anxious to play the Beta 6 but hate the tech specialization so much that I will postpone it untill there is a solution.

My custom race in GC and every other strategy game I play focuses in research, so this limitation it's a game breaker to me to the point I don't like the game like this anymore.

They made a really bad decision on this..

Good news, Im also trying and testing..

A good idea would be to use the techdefs before the Beta 6 and use it as a base to modify the updated one and making it work exactly like it should!

I'm holding off on modding this thing because I wonder if the devs will make any edits to the system before release.  Doing a full mod on tech trees is... tedious.