[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Shadowstar:

There's an interesting idea: have one tech field that's reserved for artifacts. It can't be researched, but you can group together all kinds of crazy components into that field and let people find them. Perhaps there could be one super rare artifact that you could find that would open up that field for research, like some kind of ancient alien data crystal that has all of the technological information for an ancient, all-powerful alien race that mysteriously dissapeared eons ago. Researching that field would simulate scientists attempting to decode the information from the crystal. You'd get some cool new gadget every now and then. Course, it would have to be expensive and the artifact that would let you do that kind of research would have to be pretty rare. A gamemaster could even design an entire PBW or PBEM game around it; the goal being to find the planet the crystal is on and maintain control of it for a certain number of turns.

Ahhh... sorry about the run-on folks.

Yes, you can do this. Look at the TechArea.txt file and you will see that 'ancient ruins unique' techs are tech fields like any other. If you gave them multiple levels you could then research them after you got that initial find. So you could have entire 'ancient artifact' fields off the main tree.