Ya. You're right. I'm expecting nothing to change. I just wanted to fill the heads of the developers with new ideas to work with.

I like the idea behind a name change for the technology, to make it more interesting, not to keen on some of the suggestion but I probably will have that anywhere.

I hope they look over tech at some point, just to smoothen the edges

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

No... just no... Cross-tree- requirements is a pain to figure out as a player, and that was the whole point of putting all the techs up on the same technology tree table, instead of having to flip around the 3 choices.

He dont want the focus to change (im sure), he just don't want to have to flip back, flip forth, look at warfare, then flip back to civilization because he might want more food, then flip to warfare, but remember the quest upgrades are under the magic tree, then go flip the magic tree tech tab and figure out he really needs more coins in the end, so he ends up flipping back to civilization and researching "Currency"...

Thats my impression of the current tabs anyways.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I think the main problem with the three separate tech trees is that you still need at least a few basic techs from each tree to be competitive, no matter what strategy you are pursuing. I would like to see each of the trees become viable on it's own, but cater to different play styles. This is partly inspired by Derek's own work; it's been a while since I've played, but IIRC in Fall from Heaven one of the important choices you had to make at the start of the game was whether to use the 'regular' units, or go down the hunting path. Both offered quite different playstyles.

For FE, the current division into civilization/warfare/magic will do fine, but I'm sure other philosophical divisions could be used (for instance Cooperation/Domination/Isolation. or Democratic/Autocratic/Meritocratic, Life/Death/Elementalists, etc). But to stick with the current division, here is how I would like to see the different trees play:

Civilization:
This tech tree focuses on building a large economy, that will allow you to build a few towns up to very high levels, or expand out with a large number of less advanced cities. Techtree offers some bonuses for towns, and better buildings and resource improvements. Playstyle can vary from peaceful trader to colonial power to grand unified empire. Military relies mainly on large armies of cheap soldiers with little training and only average equipment. Magic will be mostly utilitarian.

Warfare:
The warfare tree focuses on combat obviously. The tree will give some bonuses to fortresses, and will allow you to become a conqueror, mercenary,  or the ultimate turtle. Creating a large unified empire will be more difficult than with the civilization tree, but that doesn't mean you can't beat other factions into submission (or completely obliterate them if you desire). Military relies on a smaller number of highly trained troops with the best equipment (maybe supplemented with some cannon-fodder from subjugated factions). Magic focuses mostly on offensive and defensive spells.

Magic:
Factions using this tree rely on magic for almost everything. They can produce way more mana than other factions, but also consume if faster. The techtree offers some bonuses for conclaves, and allows for more enchantments on units and cities. A few cities can be build up to mythical heights (both literally and figuratively), or a large number of smaller towns can be maintained for the more expansive players. In combat these factions can rely on powerful wizards, hordes of summoned monsters, or regular troops equipped with magical weapons and aided by enchantments.

I think the game would be a lot more interesting this way, and offer a lot more replayability by trying the different playstyles with each faction.

Wouldn't that kind of defeat the point? Because that is what we have now. The reason I would make three separately viable tech trees is that it would be easier to balance, otherwise you'd still be forced to research techs from each tree to remain competitive.

I got E:WoM around its release time, played it a bit, forgot about it, now I checked up and saw the FE beta.

So, on topic: I don't have the beta, so I dont know the exact tech cost numbers and so on, but if it works the traditional way with fixed RP costs on everything, then yes, it will always be the best choice to develop technologies from all 3 trees simultaneously. The basic idea is, you'd almost always want to finish all of your 10 RP research items before starting any of your 50 RP items (just throwing numbers in there to make the point). Because the overall benefit you get per RP spent tends to diminish the further you advance into the tree(s). Rushing a specific research item would only occur as part of some early game strategy.

Master of Orion 1 (one of the best TBS games to date IMO) had something like 7 separate lines of research. Most of the time you'd want to get the cheapest techs of any type first, but there were a quite a few specific technologies that were early/mid "game breakers" if rushed. Also some techs were randomly chosen to be unavailable -- and somehow it ended up being varied enough to be interesting, but this is, I think, a difficult problem in game design.

I think a mechanic that escalates the cost of all remaining items every time you gain an additional tech will make specialization into 1 or 2 trees a viable strategy.

Such a thing has been done with the cost structure Civ5's social policies, for example.

There might be other ways to go about it, maybe something like the magic book picking at the start of MoM, which essentially determined how much of each sphere of magic you'd be able to research, only way to get a considerable number of high tier spells of a certain type would have at least half your book picks on that type. There are similar ideas, less harsh than making some tech items unavailable at random -- giving scaling bonuses to research speed in one or two trees over the other(s) for instance. You still have to balance it carefully so it's not always the best strategy to take an equal number of books of all 3 types...