You simply need to remove the <UpgradesFrom>...</UpgradesFrom> tags,

this also means that you cant upgrade those improvements anymore,

so if you want to replace a lvl1 factory with a lvl2 you need to destroy the lvl1 factory first

I would think this would put the AI at a even greater disadvantage as it probably is not smart enough to replace existing buildings and if there are no upgrades would not be upgrading items.

Also the costs would be skewed. Upgrading something is almost always cheaper than starting from new. Thus unless you increase the costs you are getting something much more valuable for less costs.

I just don't think it's worth the time to do it 5 times to get to the last level, it makes researching late game techs not viable and more worth it to go for victory with level 3-4 buildings. Since most games don't get over 300 turns anyway I felt it would solve the problem.

I don't want to break the AI...I would want to be able to build whatever I want and upgrade it whenever I wanted, just like in galciv 2 and the alpha or beta used to allow it too if I remember correctly.

So I tried adding multiple upgradeFrom tags but it didn't work, I tried adding a upgradesFrom>NONE < but it didn't work, I tried making this work many ways but it all fails, but there has to be a way.

Darca ; -)

can you have multiple upgrades from tags?
i seem to recall having an <option> tag at some point  

you could create a few clones of the various buildings

if the current setup is b01->b02->b03->b04 requiring you to build 01-04 in that order

you create a clone of 02, (c02) and update b03 so that it can upgrade from the b02 and c02 buildings

similar you create a clone of 03 and 04 and change b04 to upgrade from either its original or its clone

so you could have multiple build paths, b01-b02-b03-b04,  c02-b03-b04, c03-b04, c04