Well, if we remember master of orion, I could do a mod-script that randomly restricts each spell to three nations-in-play.
In a 6-nation game, you'd get a random 50% of the possible spells. Which might or might not [censored] you over completely
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This would produce some variety but wouldn't address Cleveland's issue, which is fundamental to the mechanics.
Even in MOO, though, it was to your advantage to move research around in strange ways. An entirely different system, were you got random spells periodically, of various levels, depending on how much research you invested, would perhaps be "better", but is completely beyond the scope of the current binrary, let alone the existing mod commands.