[Alneyan]

I can remove all the ruins if I remove both the ruins abilities (I set them to 0% chance of appearing, giving 0 technology if they do appear) and the four unique technologies. Unfortunately, it means a mod will have to be used for the game, but it modifies nothing beyond removing the ruins. It can be set up very quickly as well.

I will be doing a bit more testing of the mod now, to make sure ruins have been hexed out of existence for the millenia to come (of course, I will still check the No Ruins box, just to teach them a lesson). Would this sort of mod interest anyone, either for hosting or for play?

No ruin appeared in several games (5,000 planets in total had no ruins, even though ruins were enabled), so I gather the safety measure is doing its job. But I have just been reminded of something annoying: the mod would have to be set up on PBW, as it would be needed during play. That, or trust the players not to use the special ruin technologies, and only use the mod at game start (which would remove the standard technologies from planets, leaving Massive thingies and the Neural Net).