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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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'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.

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.

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.

Also "Science" = "Knowledge".

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.