I have been thinking about magical weapons and there are some problems with the current design scheme. Magic weapons do less damage than their mundane counterparts. I originally accepted this because the thought may have been that a Magic minded nation would have cruder versions of most weapons, but their ability to enchant those crude weapons could make them on par with a more skilled Warfare minded nation. But then I realized that I have to research the standard weapons techs and then the magical ones become available. So in essence, magical weapons are about equal to the previous tech I just researched. Since I have already mastered the art of smithing an ax, I should be able to enchant that ax with fire, making it more powerful than a regular ax.
This is how I have modded it in my current game:
Ax: 10 Cutting, +5 to Crit.
Burning Ax: 10 Cutting, 5 Fire Damage, +5 to Crit.
The effect is that you are enchanting the ax you previously had, to do extra fire damage. It doesn't make sense that the cutting powe would go down by 5. That makes the Burning Ax no better than the Ax I just spent 3 years trying to improve on.
The other way you could go is to not require Burning Ax to have Weapons as a prerequisite. That would follow the idea that a Magic minded nation is focusing on different priorities, and thus rely on magic to compensate for their lack of skill in smithing an ax. It would even better to have a third tech, Masterwork Enchanted Weapons, that does require Weapons and Enchantment. So the player can chose to specialize in the two trees and come out with a better weapon. The opportunity cost would be spending more time in the lower levels of the tech trees, while your opponents get to higher tier techs.
This is all a part of the systemic problem of having the Magic Tree require the Warfare Tree, which requires the Civilization Tree. There is no space here for specialization.
