I think I've found a way to rebalance unity, perks and techs.

[Diettinger]

I have always thought that unit, culture and many legal ought not to be so locked down and the cost scalable with the existing culture. If your country's ethics are generally warlike, then dominance ought to be cheaper. Similarly, if you change your ethics to move away from warlike behavior those changes should either make maintaining those dominance traditions costly (vs 0 cost) and changes more expensive.

 

[gja102]

The general idea of assigning 'ideologies' to techs reminds me a little of Alpha Centauri. That game split the techs thematically into Explore, Discover, Build, and Conquer. The different ideological factions had the same tech tree, but each faction would lean into a different 'theme' of tech e.g. the scientists would theoretically get 'Discover' techs more often.

Anything reminiscent of Alpha Centauri is probably a good thing!

Personally I would also like to see tech differentiation based on the in-game research fields. E.g. one empire becomes Materials experts and has awesome armor, one empire specialises in Particles and has unique lasers, etc etc. Though tying tech to the tradition tree is an interesting idea too.