Weirdness with Empire Progression

[Ethorin]

So, Celestian gives you the Strat Op to summon an Ascended Teacher at lvl 25, at lvl 20 they unlock building Star Guides. Meanwhile, Psynumbra over here unlocks the Tac OP that temp summons their T4 in battle at lvl 25, at lvl 20 you can buy the ability to build the Psynumbran T4, Malictors are at lvl 15. Heritor meanwhile, is all sorts of messed up, High Lords are unlocked at lvl 10, Siphoners at 11, and Quintessence Arks at 17. Promethean's lvl 25 is the tragically difficult to actually use PyrX Bomb(25 damage... NEXT turn.) Xenoplague's lvl 25 is "and now you can kill enemies affected with Parasitic Infection to upgrade Destroyers to Plague Lords"... but there's no earlier "Kill enemies affected with Parasitic Infection to spawn Pustules" or "Kill enemies affected with Parasitic Infection to upgrade your Pustules to Destroyers", I suspect tooltip error currently, but it's also possible that's exactly what it means. Void Tech's 25 is Dimensional Collapse, and they join Celestian in unlocking their T3 at lvl 20. Promethean Aegis Tanks are at 14 but Phoenix Walkers are also at 20. Synth, Xeno, and Psynumbra give you their first unit at lvl 5, unlike everyone else, who has to wait till 10-11. Synth gives you TNI at lvl 18, and joins the rest of the "T3 at lvl 20" club.

Anyway, while a bunch of that is interesting, the really truly weird bits are Celestian vs Psynumbra, and Heritor's weirdly mixed up unlock order. Everyone else, and I do mean everyone, unlocks stuff in basically the order you could research them, Heritor on the other hand... And I'm pretty unsure why Ascended Teachers are purely summoned and Herald's get to be built.

Anyway, Imma go back to trying to either get a Grail world I'd be having fun with for 50 turns or finding a planet to finish off leveling Promethean.

 

[The Founder]

Not all secret tech units are created equal. The value of a single unit you can get via renown, is not the same as the value of the unit within it's secret tech.
Secret techs are based on Synergy:
How could you even use any of the Synthesis buff operations without having integrated units? How will you get mod-free integrated units without that T1 tech passive?
Purifiers fire weapons are detrimental without you being able to ignore the Hazards.

I am sure there is something sensible once you consider the lack of Syneregies.

but there's no earlier "Kill enemies affected with Parasitic Infection to spawn Pustules" or "Kill enemies affected with Parasitic Infection to upgrade your Pustules to Destroyers"

I once reported a bug where having a Xenoplague unit without being Xenoplague, spawned a Pustule for a random Xenoplague player on the planet. So it is likely that you can always spawn pustules.
There is no specific unlock for "Evolving Destroyers" or "Evolving Plaguelords".

 

[Ethorin]

There is no specific unlock for "Evolving Destroyers" or "Evolving Plaguelords".

...

Xenoplague's lvl 25 is "and now you can kill enemies affected with Parasitic Infection to upgrade Destroyers to Plague Lords"

...
anyway!

Purifiers fire weapons are detrimental without you being able to ignore the Hazards.

ehhhhh... I pretty rarely actually find myself needing to be able to ignore the fire hazards to do more to the enemy than it does to me... that seems like a pretty basic skill to me given your starting Purifier is in a stack that has no other thermal hazard immune units for a while.

How could you even use any of the Synthesis buff operations without having integrated units?

Hence why your first unlock is Guardian Daemon Shell. And a quick scan suggests there's like, four ops available that depend on integrated units, the rest are offensive.

Not all secret tech units are created equal. The value of a single unit you can get via renown, is not the same as the value of the unit within it's secret tech.
Secret techs are based on Synergy:

Uh huh, still doesn't explain Siphoners at lvl 11 and Arks at lvl 17 with High Lords at 10. High Lords, sure, worst Heritor unit in a non Heritor context, but Siphoners pre-Ark? That seems... questionable... especially given just how much of Heritors generic power is "Siphoner Resets are Stonkers".

 

[The Founder]

Uh huh, still doesn't explain Siphoners at lvl 11 and Arks at lvl 17 with High Lords at 10. High Lords, sure, worst Heritor unit in a non Heritor context, but Siphoners pre-Ark? That seems... questionable... especially given just how much of Heritors generic power is "Siphoner Resets are Stonkers".

The Arks "Sacrament of Decay" buff only makes sense if you got some spamable units with Entropic damage around. And the Siphoner kinda is that one, so of course it has to come before the Ark.
But the Arks support power is also largely dependant on when you get the "can now connect with 6" mod, so having it at level 17 does not mater that much if you lack the connection multiplier.

 

[Ethorin]

But the Arks support power is also largely dependant on when you get the "can now connect with 6" mod, so having it at level 17 does not mater that much if you lack the connection multiplier.

Literally never. No unit specific mods are in any of the progression trees!

Again, the weird part to me is how awkward the whole thing is with Heritor units.