[Puke]

yeah. Imperialism had a great system where after one player researched a technology, other players had the option of buying it. I think it was exclusive for a short period, then it became available on the open market.

essentially technologies represented industrial developments, and you were recruiting merchants and tradesmen and industry barons and such whom could develop those technologies within your nation.

doing something similar in se4 would definitly require a hard code change, unless you played a moderated game or a game with a good code of honor where players made technologies available to each other shortly after researching them.