OK, pardon my mess here. I'm brainstorming.
I've dissected the Amarian Tech tree (incidentally, the Wiki is wrong, dunno who to talk to about that, weapons don't branch to armors back to weapons now).
The particular tree I'm interested in is: Harvesting!
Currently, Harvesting looks something like this:
Harvesting --> Guilds --> Mining Guilds --> Smelting --> Blacksmithing --> Refined Mining
..............................\--> Farming Guilds -->Superior Farming --> Refined Farming
Note that Harvesting and Equipment are baseline techs (you start with those).
Now assume that Harvesting and Equipment are essentially the SAME tech
Here's what I'm pondering currently
(0) Harvesting/Equipment: Gnarled Club, Primitive Knife, Pointy Stick, Hide Armor, Stone Axe (think Caveman)
(1) Guilds (Craftsmen): Basic Hammer, Staff, Oak Spear, Wood shield, padded armor, Improved Club, Improved Axe (Hunter Gatherer), Crude Bow(?) Note: No Metals required!
(2) Mining Guilds (Bronze): Axe, War Hammer I, Dagger, Sword, Boar Spear (better than Oak), Bronze Shield, Leather armor, Bronze Plate (- to spd, etc). Shortbow (think Greece)
(3) Smelting (Iron): Axe II, Hammer II, Sword II, Polearm, Lesser Warstaff, Iron Armor/Shield, Studded/Ring Leather, Longbow (think Rome)
(4) Blacksmithing (Steel): Axe III, Hammer III, Sword III, Halberd, Warstaff, Steel Armor/Shield, Chainmail, Crossbow (think Medieval)
(5) Enchanted (Crystal): As above, just cooler
(6) Legendary (Elementium): As above, just Ultimate.
The simple thing would be just to have the weapons show up with the appropriate smithing tech, but what I have in mind is:
Harvesting: Provides basic stone, bone and wood weapons that can be crafted on the fly, throwing spears
v
Guilds --> Blunt, Cutting, Piercing, or Ranged I weapons, Armor I
v v
Bronze Mining v
v v
Mining Guilds --> Blunt II, Cutting II, Piercing II, Ranged II, Armor II
v v
Iron Mining v
v v
Smelting (Iron) --> Blunt III, Cutting III, Piercing III, Ranged III, Armor III
v v
Forged Steel v
v v
Blacksmithing (Steel) --> Blunt IV, Cutting IV, Piercing IV, Ranged IV, Armor IV
v v
Crystal Mining v
v v
Enchanting --> Blunt V, Cutting V, Piercing V, Ranged V, Armor V
v
Elementium
v
Legendary Smithing --> Blunt VI, Cutting VI, Piercing VI, Ranged VI, Armor VI
So, to qualify for Blunt II, you'd need both Mining Guilds and Blunt I. As has been pointed out to me, the GUI doesn't handle this well currently (doesn't show the proper requirements).
This would SLOOOOW down tech progression for Weapons immensely. There are 5 weapons/armor techs for each level, so the fastest you could go (assuming you beelined a single tech) would be 16 Jumps (Guilds, Bronze, Mining, Iron, Smelting, Forged, Blacksmithing, Crystal, Enchanting, Elementium Legendary, plus Blunt I-VI, if you solely focused on blunt weaponry). Add another 18 for the other four techs... that's 32 techs just for forging/weapons/armor. Looks high to me...
This could be 'dual tracked',
i.e. Bronze Mining, Iron Mining, and Forged Steel could be Lore Techs (not Civilization techs), but you'd still need to research them.
Keeping Crystal Mining, Enchanting, Elementium, and Legendary Smithing in the Magic Trees would offload another 4 techs.
This would leave 4 'crafting' techs in the Civilization Tree, plus 30 weaponry techs (Blunt, Cutting, Piercing, Ranged, Armor).
10 techs could be eliminated (The V and VI weapons/armor/ranged techs), simply stating you need Level IV techs plus Enchanting or Legendary to make said items. Another idea is to 'skip' a tech for the various weapons. Example: The Iron age didn't introduce any significant changes to clubs, but the Steel Age introduced morningstars... This would mean that you could have each 'age' focus on a weapon type. Say Spear for Bronze, Sword for Iron, and Blunt for Steel. This would drop another three techs...
So that's 17 weapon/armor/ranged techs, plus the 4 crafting techs in the Civilization tree, plus 3 in the Lore tree and 4 in the Magic tree.
I could pare some more techs (so only Cutting I and II, Blunt I and II, and Piercing I and II) to shave another 3. Dunno if I like this...
Another 18 or so weapons techs would also need to be offloaded from the Weapons tree. Most of those look like Civ techs, although training MIGHT be a lore tech...
Then there's the extra horse techs I want (Mounted Warfare --> Warhorses --> Exotic Mounts).
There are currently some 30 odd Warfare techs in the tech tree, of which 15 are weapons/armor related.
There are 21 or or so other techs in the Civ tree, some of those might be able to be moved over to lore...
Here's what I'm seeing. Eliminating the warfare tree will probably greatly overload the Civ tree. The Magic tree has room to grow. The Lore tree is another matter (there's only so much you can do with it).
Unless research base costs are tied to each tech (i.e. tech a costs more than tech b to research), what you will run into is imbalanced trees. I.e. say 60 Civilization techs, 40 Magic techs and 30 Lore techs as examples.
Based on how Elemental currently calculates research costs, the Civ tree will hit 'max' cost level pretty quickly in comparison to Lore, and you will be spending correspondingly more time there.
Enough musing for now. I was focusing on weapons, not the whole tech tree...
