RESEARCH & TECH
Thirty nodes, five branches, and far more than any single match can finish — so what you research is a statement about how you intend to win.
HOW RESEARCH WORKS
Research runs in slots. Each active project costs Action Points every turn it is running, and is fuelled by spending Technological into it. Running three projects at once is a permanent tax on your ability to act.
Higher tiers are gated by compute, not by prerequisites alone. The best technology in the game is unreachable without Data Centers, which is the structural reason compute is worth building toward even when it produces nothing you can eat or sell.
Progress on a paused project is retained, so shelving something to deal with a crisis is not a total loss.
THE FIVE BRANCHES
| BRANCH | WHAT IT BUYS |
|---|---|
| Economy | Five yield ladders, one per hub type. The straightforward compounding path. |
| Population | The doctrine axis — human augmentation versus automation. |
| Military | Attack, defense, loss mitigation, and the upkeep blend. |
| Expansion | Reclamation (building on water and arid) and Occupation (holding conquered ground). |
| Statecraft | Espionage tiers, special ability unlocks, and economic dials like the rural trickle. |
THE DOCTRINE AXIS
The Population branch is soft-opposed: investing in Human Augmentation makes automation less attractive and vice versa. It is not a hard lock — you can research both — but the returns punish indecision.
EMP versus automation hardening. Automatons are immune to sentiment, which would be strictly dominant if nothing countered it — so EMP disables them outright, and hardening research counters the EMP. The entire automation strategy lives or dies on that arms race.
WHAT IT MODIFIES
Technology is a global multiplier, not a per-tile upgrade: research that improves Agriculture improves every Agriculture Hub you own, including ones you capture later. This makes tech the most snowball-prone system in the game — and capturing a technologically advanced player's hubs does not give you their research.