[QuarianRex]

I have a working primitive mod. Its in the early stages and I have to make adjustments to the research files of the various AIs (currently only the terrans and one savage race were being used for testing) but it is working beautifully (if I do say so myself).

This has been quite a learning experience. For one, never try modding when you are drunk. The ideas were good but it took me three hours to find and fix all the typos the next day.

The mod currently has three levels of primitive; savage, steam, and space. Each has their own tech tree that follows the same pattern. For ex, savage goes from level 1 to 15, steam goes from 1-10 (covering all the tech from level 6-15 of savage), and space goes from 1-6 (covering 10-15 of savage). After completing their racial tech (and levels 15, 10, and 6 respectively) they are allowed to research "Galactic Expansion" to open up the normal tech tree. Human and AI players must also research this tech to be able to do anything else.

Originally I wanted all of the commonly shared technologies to be done through tech levels (ie. all three primitives aquiring the tech area "city" at varying times while "city" was the prerequisite for the facility of the same name). I had hoped to reduce the clutter in components.txt and facility.txt but it didn't work. only one of the same-name tech areas was credited as being the prerequisite (the lowest one on the list). That's great if you are a space race but horrible otherwise.

Also, did you know that you automatically acquire the technologies of the tech areas with a start level of 1? This happens even if you don't have access to said tech levels. I had to use racial tech areas to get around this (so that players would start with cultural centers and savages would start with settlements, for example). Twas a bit of a pain.

Despite all that I am almost done. I'll try to post something tonight or tomorow so you can test it out and give feedback.